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    Fears Over Fate of Democracy Leave Many Voters Frustrated and Resigned

    As democracy frays around them, Republicans and Democrats see different culprits and different risks.LA CROSSE, Wis. — Allyse Barba, a 34-year-old in the insurance industry, watched excitedly upstairs at Thrunie’s Classic Cocktails as Mandela Barnes, the youthful Democrat running for the Senate, tore through his stump speech just 19 days before the election.Then Ms. Barba reflected on the politics of her state: the divide between the blue dot of downtown La Crosse and the surrounding red reaches of western Wisconsin, where she said she could not have a civil conversation; the Republican favored to win the seat in her congressional district, who was at the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021; and a Legislature so gerrymandered that her Democratic Party does not stand a chance.“It is disheartening to live in a state where nothing happens,” she said glumly. “Voting isn’t making a difference right now.”Seventy-one percent of all voters believe that democracy is at risk, according to a recent New York Times/Siena College poll, but only 7 percent identified that as the most important problem facing the country. Americans face more immediate concerns: the worst inflation in 40 years, the loss of federal abortion rights after 50 years and a perception that crime is surging, if not in their communities then in cities nearby.But another factor is dampening people’s motivation to save America’s representative system of government: Some have already lost faith in its ability to represent them.Wisconsin would seem like a state where concerns over democracy feel pressing — especially in this western swath of the state. The House of Representatives committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack uncovered text messages indicating that Senator Ron Johnson, a Republican seeking re-election, wanted to hand-deliver a slate of fake Wisconsin electors to Vice President Mike Pence that day to overturn Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s narrow victory in the state.Derrick Van Orden, the fiercely pro-Trump Republican running to succeed Representative Ron Kind, a moderate Democrat who has represented much of western and central Wisconsin since 1997, was at the Capitol on Jan. 6.And Wisconsin, perhaps more than any other state, is suffering through the erosion of democratic ideals already. Though virtually every elected statewide officer here is a Democrat, extreme gerrymandering of state legislative maps has given Republicans near supermajorities in the State Senate and House. At best, Democrats enter the state elections in November hoping to perpetuate the stalemate by re-electing their governor, Tony Evers, said Michael Hallquist, a Democratic alderman in Brookfield, outside Milwaukee.But that democratic erosion may have sent many of Wisconsin’s citizens on a downward spiral of feeling powerless, apathetic and disconnected as one-party control becomes entrenched.Tammy Wood, right, at Thrunie’s in La Crosse.Liam James Doyle for The New York Times“It is daunting to convince fellow Democrats their votes matter,” said Tammy Wood, a party organizer who tried to fire up the crowd at Thrunie’s with a rousing “Welcome, Democrats, defenders of democracy!”The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsBoth parties are making their final pitches ahead of the Nov. 8 election.Where the Election Stands: As Republicans appear to be gaining an edge with swing voters in the final weeks of the contest for control of Congress, here’s a look at the state of the races for the House and Senate.Biden’s Low Profile: President Biden’s decision not to attend big campaign rallies reflects a low approval rating that makes him unwelcome in some congressional districts and states.Losing Ground: With inflation concerns front and center, the state of democracy in the United States is not shaping up to be the driver of votes that many on the left hoped it would be.In Minnesota: The race for attorney general in the light-blue state offers a pure test of which issue is likely to be more politically decisive: abortion rights or crime.“That is the purpose of the gerrymander — to make us fall into that feeling of defeat,” she added. “But we can’t let that happen.”Of course, just what is threatening democracy depends on who you talk to. Many Republicans are just as frustrated, convinced that the threat stems from liberal teachers, professors or media personalities who they fear are indoctrinating their children; undocumented immigrants given a path to citizenship; or Democrats widening access to voting so much that they are inviting fraud.Michelle Ekstrom, 48, a moderate in Waukesha, typified Republicans who fear the electoral system has already been compromised.“I feel that it’s definitely crooked,” she said. “I always think to myself, What is the purpose if I go vote? Someone crooked somewhere along the way is just going to put more votes in somewhere else than the real people’s votes. I think it’s definitely tilted heavily on the Democratic side.”Mindy Pedersen, who runs a protective packaging business in Eleva, south of Eau Claire, believes democracy is being threatened by a dwindling self-reliance among Americans, saying they seem instead to be gravitating to their own kind — women, Black people, L.G.B.T.Q. people — to press their grievances. She described a meeting of a network of female business owners where she was asked to describe how the group had helped her company thrive. She replied that her gender had nothing to do with her success; she has been ostracized ever since, she said.“Do we want equality or do we want to crush our opposition, which is men?” Ms. Pedersen asked. “If I put out a sign that said, ‘White heterosexual women matter, and by the way, I love Jesus,’ oh, could you imagine the reaction?”Indeed, ask voters exactly what is threatening democracy and the answers are as varied as the individuals who formulate them.Peter Flucke, a retired police officer, sees a breakdown of the rule of law as representing the unraveling of democratic control.Liam James Doyle for The New York TimesPeter Flucke, 61, a retired police officer from Ashwaubenon, outside Green Bay, sees a failure of governments to protect their citizens and a breakdown of the rule of law as representing the unraveling of democratic control. Where does Mr. Flucke, now a bicycle and pedestrian safety consultant, see that happening? Not in the grainy images of lawlessness seen in countless attack ads against Democrats, but in rising death tolls in Wisconsin’s crosswalks and bike lanes.Mr. Flucke, an independent, said he would probably vote for Mr. Barnes and Mr. Evers, though not because of all this democracy talk. In the end, he said, he is most worried about his two daughters losing their right to choose an abortion.Caleb Hummel, 25, an engineer in Waukesha, also sees a threat to democracy, though it is by no means top of mind: socialism. His opposition to abortion is driving his vote for Republicans, but “there’s something to” this democracy-in-peril talk, he said. “The far left is demonstrating somewhat socialist policies.”Some voters are following with alarm the threats to democracy that spun out of Donald J. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Katheryn Dose, 74, a retired nurse in La Crosse, cited at length reports of Senator Johnson’s offer to deliver the slate of fake electors for Mr. Trump. She said it was “frightening” that her congressman next year could be Mr. Van Orden. And she looked beyond her own state to candidates like Kari Lake, a Republican running for governor in Arizona, who claim falsely that the 2020 election was stolen.“For me, I really worry about people like that being elected and running this country,” Ms. Dose said. “Election deniers with the power to deny the next election? That is a huge concern.”But voters like Ms. Dose appear vastly outnumbered by those who express concern for the fate of democracy, yet say they are willing to vote for candidates who reject the legitimacy of the 2020 election.David and Mindy Pedersen at home in Eleva, Wis. Ms. Pedersen believes democracy is being threatened by a dwindling self-reliance among Americans. Mr. Pedersen scoffed at the notion Jan. 6 presented a real threat to American democracy.Liam James Doyle for The New York TimesMs. Pedersen’s husband, David, a conservative who runs the packaging company with her, scoffed at all the fuss over Jan. 6.“In reality, do you think those people were really going to overthrow the government? Really?” he asked, taking offense at even being asked whether Jan. 6 was a threat to democracy. “Was Trump ever really going to not leave office? You know he would.”Mr. Barnes, Wisconsin’s lieutenant governor, clearly senses that the issue is not his ticket to the Senate. As he spoke to supporters, he did make the case that Mr. Johnson was a threat — “He personally attacked our democracy” — but only after criticizing Mr. Johnson’s support for a tax break for the wealthy, his efforts to overturn the Affordable Care Act, his opposition to Medicare negotiating prescription drug prices, his embrace of Wisconsin’s newly relevant 1849 abortion ban and much more.If Mr. Barnes had to choose the top two issues driving voters to the polls, he said later, he would pick inflation and abortion.Barry Burden, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said some of the apathy toward democracy’s fate stemmed from the structure of the American political system. Other countries have multiparty democracies where citizens have political options more narrowly tied to their interests — like “green” parties for environmentalists, religious parties or socialists. Ruling coalitions of multiple parties offer more citizens a stake in the government and something to root for.“Our two-party system is all or nothing,” Mr. Burden said. “Either your party wins the White House or loses it, wins Congress or loses it. It makes feelings more intense, positively or negatively.”People gathering outside Democratic Party offices in Eau Claire, Wis., after a canvassing event.Liam James Doyle for The New York TimesAnd in states like Wisconsin, Ohio, North Carolina and Georgia, where gerrymandering has ensured that the electorate’s partisan composition need bear little resemblance to that of its Legislature or congressional delegation, those feelings are entrenched. Only 2 percent of bills sponsored by Democrats in the Wisconsin State Legislature last session got a hearing, much less a vote.“In many ways, it does feel like there is not a lot of hope,” Mr. Hallquist, the alderman, said.Brad Pfaff, the candidate trying to keep western Wisconsin in the Democratic column, knows he has “more work to do” to convince voters that his opponent, Mr. Van Orden, a telegenic, retired Navy SEAL, disqualified himself from serving in Congress on Jan. 6.Mr. Van Orden’s campaign did not respond to repeated requests for comment, but Mr. Van Orden wrote in an op-ed in The La Crosse Tribune that he had traveled to Washington “to stand for the integrity of our electoral system.”“When it became clear that a protest had become a mob, I left the area, as to remain there could be construed as tacitly approving this unlawful conduct,” Mr. Van Orden said.His base is not asking for an apology. “Why wasn’t the same shadow cast on the people burning down buildings and attacking the police the summer before?” Ms. Pedersen asked. “Why were those thugs not painted the same way as the Trump thugs?”Democrats are not giving Mr. Van Orden a pass.“The idea that Wisconsin would allow someone who was part of the Jan. 6 insurrection to go to Congress, the idea that we could even contemplate that, is deeply troubling,” Tammy Baldwin, the state’s Democratic senator, told party volunteers in Eau Claire before sending them off to canvass.But Mr. Pfaff sees it as a distinct possibility, if not a probability.Nationally, the Times/Siena poll found, 71 percent of Republicans said they would be comfortable voting for a candidate who thought the 2020 election had been stolen, as did 37 percent of independent voters and a notable 12 percent of Democrats.Mr. Pfaff, whose family has farmed in La Crosse County for seven generations and who served in the state and federal departments of agriculture, said he did not so much argue that Mr. Van Orden’s presence at the Capitol disqualified him. Instead, Mr. Pfaff said, it was “a window into his soul,” revealing “who he is as an individual” — too partisan for a district that, in the last 42 years, has been represented by a moderate and openly gay Republican, Steve Gunderson, and then by a centrist Democrat, Mr. Kind.But the district has changed. The consolidation of family farms into corporate operations has dislocated families from land they had worked for generations, turning them into employees of big agribusiness. Local manufacturing has been buffeted by globalization.“That has had a real impact on the people of this district,” Mr. Pfaff said. “They do feel that we’ve been left behind.”In the long rural stretches, hills and coulees between the hipster hangouts and union halls of La Crosse and Eau Claire, Van Orden and Johnson campaign signs jostle with faded Trump-Pence placards. Mr. Pfaff, who noted that Democratic super PACs were not coming to his aid, said it would be pointless in any case for outsiders to ask local voters to reject Mr. Van Orden as a threat to the political order.“We’re patriotic Americans, we know the difference between right and wrong, and what happened in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6 was wrong,” he said. “But the thing is, if somebody from the outside, you know, somebody from the East Coast or West Coast, starts talking about something like that, that’s not how people want it. They’re not going to hear that.”Dan Simmons More

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    The 2022 Midterms: Is Wisconsin the Future of America?

    Listen and follow ‘The Run-Up’Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicOn today’s episode: How a 12-year project to lock in political power in Wisconsin could culminate in this year’s midterms — and provide a glimpse into where the rest of the country is headed.ilbusca/ Getty ImagesOn today’s episodeReid J. Epstein, who covers campaigns and elections for The New York Times. He previously worked as a political reporter in Wisconsin.Background reading“Republicans have such control of the levers of power in Wisconsin that voters are almost immaterial,” Reid J. Epstein wrote in the On Politics newsletter. “It is the most gerrymandered state legislature in the country.”In April, the conservative majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court voted to adopt new state legislative maps. The maps were partisan gerrymanders that had been drawn in secret after the 2010 elections, when Republicans took control from Democrats in both houses of the Legislature.Maps in four other states were ruled illegal gerrymanders, but they’re being used anyway. Here’s why.Credits“The Run-Up” is hosted by More

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    In Fight for Congress, a Surprising Battleground Emerges: New York

    After a haywire redistricting process, New York has more congressional battlegrounds than nearly any other state. Even the Democratic campaign chairman is locked in a dead heat.POUGHKEEPSIE, N.Y. — Just a month before November’s critical midterm elections, New York has emerged from a haywire redistricting cycle as perhaps the most consequential congressional battleground in the country, and Democrats are mired in an increasingly costly fight just to hold their ground.All told, nine of New York’s 26 seats — from the tip of Long Island to the banks of the Hudson River here in Poughkeepsie — are in play, more than any state but California.For Democrats, the uncertainty is particularly jarring: Just 10 months ago, party leaders, who controlled the once-in-a-decade redistricting process in the state, optimistically predicted that new district lines could safeguard Democrats and imperil as many as five Republican seats, allowing them to add key blocks to their national firewall.That, to put it gently, is not how things seem to be turning out.New York’s Most Competitive House Races More

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    Gerrymandering, the Full Story

    A Times analysis finds that the House of Representative has its fairest map in 40 years, despite recent gerrymandering.If you asked Americans to describe the ways that political power has become disconnected from public opinion, many would put the gerrymandering of congressional districts near the top of the list. State lawmakers from both parties have drawn the lines of House districts in ways meant to maximize the number that their own party will win, and Republicans in some states have been especially aggressive, going so far as to ignore court orders.Yet House gerrymandering turns out to give Republicans a smaller advantage today than is commonly assumed. The current map is only slightly tilted toward Republicans, and both parties have a legitimate chance to win House control in the coming midterm elections.My colleague Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst, explains this situation in the latest version of his newsletter. “In reality, Republicans do have a structural edge in the House, but it isn’t anything near insurmountable for the Democrats,” Nate writes. “By some measures, this is the fairest House map of the last 40 years.”Republican advantage in how districts lean More

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    Gerrymandering Isn’t Giving Republicans the Advantage You Might Expect

    Yes, the G.O.P. has a structural edge in the House, but it isn’t anything near insurmountable for Democrats.There is no shortage of reasons Republicans are expected to retake the House this year, including President Biden’s low approval ratings and the long history of struggles for the president’s party in midterm elections.But there’s another issue that looms over the race for the House, one that doesn’t have anything to do with the candidates or the voters at all: the fairness of the newly redrawn congressional maps.You might assume that the House map is heavily gerrymandered toward Republicans, especially after Republicans enacted aggressive gerrymanders in critical states like Texas and Florida. Many of you might even presume that this gerrymandering means that the House isn’t merely likely to go to the Republicans, but that it’s also out of reach for Democrats under any realistic circumstances.In reality, Republicans do have a structural edge in the House, but it isn’t anything near insurmountable for the Democrats. By some measures, this is the fairest House map of the last 40 years. More

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    Ron DeSantis’s Race Problem

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

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    Democrats Sense a Shift in the Political Winds, but It May Not Be Enough

    Energized abortion-rights voters. Donald J. Trump back in the spotlight. Stronger-than-expected special elections, including a surprising win early Wednesday in New York.Democratic leaders, once beaten down by the prospect of a brutal midterm election in the fall, are daring to dream that they can maintain control of Congress this November.An unexpected victory by Pat Ryan, a Democrat, in a special House election to fill a vacancy in New York’s Hudson Valley offered Democrats solid evidence that their voters were willing to come out and that their message was resonating. It followed strong Democratic showings in other special elections, in Nebraska, Minnesota and upstate New York, since the Supreme Court repealed Roe v. Wade. Mr. Ryan placed abortion rights front and center while his Republican opponent, Marc Molinaro, sidestepped the issue to focus on the problems his party still believes will drive voters — inflation, crime, the economy. It didn’t work.“Kevin McCarthy made a big mistake by measuring the drapes too early and doubling down on Trumpism, and it’s proving to be fatal,” said Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, referring to the House Republican leader.But the House map in 2022 favors Republicans, thanks to Republican-led redistricting and a slew of retirements of Democratic lawmakers. That means the shifting political winds are more likely to merely blunt any Republican wave in the House rather than save the Democratic majority.Primary races and special elections, which fill seats that are vacated before the end of a lawmaker’s term, are not necessarily reliable predictors of general election turnout, Republicans note.“Majorities are won in November, not August,” said Michael McAdams, the communications director for the National Republican Congressional Committee, the House Republicans’ official campaign arm. “We look forward to prosecuting the case against Democrats’ failed one-party rule that’s left American families worse off.”That endeavor is becoming harder. Falling gas prices have robbed Republicans of the starkest visual evidence of inflation. Passage in recent weeks of legislation to control prescription drug prices, tackle climate change, extend health insurance subsidies, bolster domestic semiconductor manufacturing and impose tighter gun controls on teenagers and the mentally ill have given Democrats achievements to run on while countering accusations of a do-nothing Congress.And the F.B.I.’s seizure of hundreds of highly classified documents from Mr. Trump’s Florida home has put the former president back into the spotlight as Democrats press their efforts to cast Republicans as extremists and make the November election a choice between the two parties, not a referendum on President Biden.Demonstrators against former President Donald J. Trump near Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., shortly after the FBI recovered boxes of government documents.Saul Martinez for The New York TimesFor the first time since the fall of 2021, polling averages indicate a narrow majority of voters who say they prefer Democratic over Republican control of Congress.Even some Republicans own up to nervousness.“It looks like troubling clouds on the horizon to me,” said Representative Billy Long, a Republican from Missouri. “The Republicans need to heed Satchel Paige’s advice of ‘Don’t look back. Something may be gaining on you.’”And yet, for all the trend lines tilting toward Democrats, there is still the unavoidable math of the midterms.Read More on Abortion Issues in AmericaFetal Personhood: A push to grant fetuses the same legal rights as people is gaining momentum, as anti-abortion activists move beyond bans and aim to get the procedure classified as murder.Struggling to Decode Laws: Doctors’ concerns about complying with new abortion bans left a pregnant Louisiana woman with a fatal diagnosis for her fetus, but no clear path for an abortion.Surrogacy Industry: Fearful of legal and medical consequences of new abortion laws, gestational surrogates and those working with them are rewriting contracts and changing the way they operate.A Rare Prosecution: A teenager used pills to terminate her pregnancy at home with the aid of her mother. Their Facebook messages are now key evidence in a rare prosecution over abortion.Republicans need a mere five seats to win a House majority — and their candidates are in strong positions to win the bulk of nine districts that Mr. Trump would have won easily two years ago if the new maps had been in place. Seven of those nine seats do not have a Democratic incumbent to defend them. Republicans might have their pick of another seven Democratic seats that Mr. Trump would have won in 2020, though by narrower margins. Four of those have no incumbent to defend them.The nonpartisan Cook Political Report rates 10 Democratic seats as leaning toward or likely to be Republican, against three Republican seats that lean Democratic. That works out to a Republican majority.“The Republicans don’t need a wave to win back the House,” said Nathan L. Gonzalez, a nonpartisan House election analyst. “There will be some Democrats who win in Trump districts, but they will be the exceptions, not the rule.”Still, more than a dozen interviews with Democratic candidates illustrated the consistency of their optimism. They all saw Democratic and independent voters as newly energized by the abortion issue. They believed recent Democratic achievements had changed their image as an ineffectual majority to an effective one. And they detected real fear among voters of a resurgent, anti-democracy right wing, abetted by the Republican leadership. More

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    Nadler Routs Maloney in Marquee Showdown of Bruising New York Primaries

    Representative Jerrold Nadler, the influential chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, handily defeated his longtime congressional neighbor, Carolyn B. Maloney, in a bruising three-way primary battle on Tuesday that was preordained to end one of the powerful Democrats’ political careers.The star-crossed skirmish in the heart of Manhattan was unlike any New York City — or the Democratic Party writ large — had seen in recent memory. Though few ideological differences were at stake, it pitted two committee chairs who have served side by side in Washington since the 1990s against each other, and cleaved party faithful into rival factions.Allies had tried to pull Mr. Nadler off the collision course into a neighboring race after the state’s calamitous redistricting process unexpectedly combined their West and East Side districts this spring. But he pushed forward, relying in a lightning-fast campaign on his reputation as an old-school progressive and leading foil to Donald J. Trump to win over voters in one of the nation’s most liberal districts.“Here’s the thing: I’m a New Yorker, just like Bella Abzug, Ted Weiss and Bill Fitts Ryan,” Mr. Nadler, 75, told supporters after his victory, referencing liberal lions who represented New York in Congress. “We New Yorkers just don’t know how to surrender.”Mr. Nadler, in thanking Ms. Maloney, said that the two had “spent much of our adult life working together to better New York and our nation.”He won the contest for New York’s redrawn 12th District with 56 percent of the vote, compared with Ms. Maloney’s 24 percent, with 93 percent of votes counted. A third candidate, Suraj Patel, earned 19 percent, siphoning crucial votes away from Ms. Maloney, whom he nearly beat two years ago.It all but assures Mr. Nadler a 16th full term in Congress and Ms. Maloney’s political retirement.The race — which ended in underhanded jabs about Mr. Nadler’s mental and physical fitness — was the highlight of a string of ugly primary contests that played out across the state on Tuesday, from Long Island to Buffalo, as Democrats and Republicans each fought over rival personalities and the ideological direction of their parties.In another of the most closely watched contests, Representative Sean Patrick Maloney, the moderate lawmaker tasked with protecting Democrats’ narrow House majority, easily fended off a challenge from Alessandra Biaggi, a state senator and a rising star of New York’s left wing.The race in the lower Hudson Valley had become an ideological proxy fight, and Ms. Biaggi’s defeat was the latest high-profile setback for leftists in New York. The former President Bill Clinton and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi endorsed Mr. Maloney, while Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez publicly backed Ms. Biaggi.“Tonight, mainstream won,” Mr. Maloney said in his victory speech. He will face Mike Lawler, a Republican assemblyman, in what may be a competitive general election.Outside Buffalo, Carl Paladino, a businessman known for his explosive, sometimes racist remarks, was leading a Republican primary against Nick Langworthy, the state Republican chairman who entered the race because he feared that Mr. Paladino could harm the party’s statewide ticket in November.A 13-candidate Democratic primary in the new 10th District connecting Brooklyn and Lower Manhattan remained too close to call, as Daniel S. Goldman held a narrow lead. The results were similarly close in a special election for a Hudson Valley swing seat, vacated by Lt. Gov. Antonio Delgado, that could offer a preview of the general election.The primary contests were particularly painful for Democrats, who entered the election cycle optimistic that the decennial redistricting process in blue New York would yield crucial pickup opportunities to protect their loose grip on the House of Representatives this fall.Instead, the state’s highest court ruled this spring that the Democrats’ congressional map was unconstitutional and put in place a neutral alternative. It set off anguishing intraparty brawls that have drained millions of dollars that party leaders had hoped would go toward defeating Republicans and will now cost the state Ms. Maloney’s important House Oversight and Reform Committee chairmanship in Washington. More