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Conor Lamb Enters 2022 Pennsylvania Senate Race

Conor Lamb Enters 2022 Pennsylvania Senate Race

PITTSBURGH – Rep. Conor Lamb believes he knows what it takes for Democrats to win in Pennsylvania nationwide.

He looks at President Biden, whose narrow victory in the state – named four days after Election Day – got him over the top and into the White House.

“People will use the word moderate,” Lamb said Thursday at his home in Pittsburgh’s South Hills. “We are a swing state. I don’t think we’re ideologically too advanced either way. ”

On Friday, at a union hall on Hot Metal Street in Pittsburgh, Mr. Lamb announced his long-awaited entry into the 2022 Pennsylvania Senate race, vowing to “fight for every single vote in our state on every single square inch of ground” and presenting himself as a middle class enough to be elected nationwide.

The question is whether he’s liberal enough to win the Democratic primary.

A Navy veteran and former prosecutor, Mr. Lamb, 37, is likely the last major candidate to step into what is expected to be major competitive battles in both parties for the seat of Senator Pat Toomey, a retiring Republican.

It is the only vacant Republican-owned seat in a state that Mr Biden has held, and the Democrats see this as their best opportunity to expand their pinpoint control of the Senate, in which the 50-50 partisan split has Vice President Kamala Harris with the cast leaves decisive votes. A single extra seat would mean a simple Democratic majority in the Senate and at least shield the White House a little from the whims of individual senators who are now a huge influence, like moderates Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona.

Mr Lamb became famous in 2018 when he won a special election to the House of Representatives in a district that Mr Trump had run in double digits. He won twice more in a redrawn but still politically mixed district, staking out independent positions, including voting against MP Nancy Pelosi for Speaker of the House. But while he calls himself the strongest potential Democratic candidate precisely because of his two-sided, centrist approach, aspects of his record, including guns and marijuana, are not up to par with many primary voters.

“Progressives are the most active in the party and that makes it difficult for Lamb,” said Brendan McPhillips, who led Mr Biden’s 2020 Pennsylvania campaign and does not work for a Senate candidate.

The progressives’ early favorite and alleged front runner for the Democratic nomination is Lt. Gov. Something of a folk hero on the national left, John Fetterman, with roughly 400,000 Twitter followers, who enjoy his posts in favor of “legal weed” and his frequent beatings on Mr. Manchin and Ms. Sinema for not “voting like Democrats”.

As the 14-year-old mayor of Braddock, a poor community outside of Pittsburgh, Mr. Fetterman tattooed the dates of the local murders on his arm. As lieutenant governor, he fought to pardon longtime prisoners of conscience.

Known for a casual work wardrobe of unlocked craftsman shirts and jeans or even shorts, and for his imposing presence – he’s six feet tall and has a shaved head – Mr. Fetterman, 51, hopes to appeal to some working-class white voters who float over to Support Mr Trump. He has outperformed the fundraising field, raising $ 6.5 million this year.

Still, Mr Fetterman’s challenge is the downside of Mr Lamb’s: He could win the May primary but be seen as too liberal for Pennsylvania general election voters. “He’s the candidate many Republicans would like to face,” said Jessica Taylor, an analyst for the bipartisan Cook Political Report.

In an incident in 2013 when he was Mayor of Braddock, Mr. Fetterman faced potential liability in the primary. After hearing what he thought were gunshots, Mr. Fetterman stopped a black jogger and held it at gunpoint until the police arrived. The man was found unarmed and was released. Bringing on the episode in February, Mr Fetterman said he made “split-second decisions” when he believed a nearby school might be at risk.

However, with police and vigilante violence against black men a high profile issue for Democratic voters, some party officials and strategists have expressed fears that if nominated, Mr Fetterman could lower black voter turnout. An outside group supporting the election of black candidates has already run a radio ad in Philadelphia attacking Mr. Fetterman over the incident.

“It’s definitely a problem,” said Christopher Borick, a political scientist and pollster at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania. “It hasn’t disappeared and keeps reappearing. It hoists red flags. “

In a statement, Mr Fetterman’s campaign stated that four months after the incident in Braddock, an 80 percent black town, he was “overwhelmingly re-elected” because voters “know John and know this had nothing ”. to do with race. ”It added that he“ ran and won across the country, and he is the only candidate running for this Senate seat to have done so ”.

If Democratic voters resist Mr. Fetterman and Mr. Lamb, a path could open up for alternative candidates, including Val Arkoosh, a district official in the electoral suburbs of Philadelphia and the only woman in the race, and Malcolm Kenyatta, a telegenic youngster State legislature from North Philadelphia.

Mr Kenyatta, who would be the state’s first black and first openly gay Senate candidate if he won the election, has traveled extensively seeking local support but lags behind his rivals in fundraising.

Ms. Arkoosh, a medical doctor and chairman of the Board of Commissioners in Montgomery County, the state’s third largest county, has endorsement of Emily’s list of Democratic women who support abortion rights.

Together, Mr. Fetterman, Mr. Lamb, and Mrs. Arkoosh outperformed their Republican counterparts for the quarter ended June.

While Democrats see a model in Mr Biden’s 81,000-vote win last year in the state that swept suburban swing voters horrified by Mr Trump, Republicans are currently playing and narrating almost entirely against grassroots Make America Great Again the fable of a stolen election 2020.

There is a proven road to statewide victories for Republicans in Pennsylvania that was embarked on last year by two GOP nominees who were elected treasurer and auditor. They did so by running before Mr Trump in the suburbs of Philadelphia, Harrisburg and Pittsburgh, where many higher educated voters had traditionally supported Republicans but were repulsed by the harassing, divisive former president.

Mr. Toomey, the outgoing Republican senator, recently warned: “Candidates must run on ideas and principles, not on loyalty to a man.”

But few of the Republicans fighting to succeed him seem to have listened.

Sean Parnell, a former Army Ranger who lost a house race to Mr. Lamb last year, sued every 2.6 million Pennsylvania Mail-In votes, a case that was rejected by the US Supreme Court, and said he support an Arizona-style review of the 2020 Pennsylvania ballot papers. Donald Trump Jr. supported his Senate bid.

And Jeff Bartos, a Philadelphia area real estate developer and large party donor who was expected to appeal to voters in the suburbs, has similarly courted the Trump base and a “full forensic examination” of the Pennsylvania elections demanded, although several courts have denied lawsuits alleging fraud or administrative misconduct.

Neither Mr. Parnell nor Mr. Bartos raised as much cash last quarter as Dark Horse candidate Kathy Barnette, a former finance manager who lost a race in Congress on Philadelphia’s main line last year. Ms. Barnette has charged far-right cable channels Newsmax and OAN with election fraud.

A longtime Republican adviser to the state, Christopher Nicholas, said there are three lanes of travel available to GOP candidates: “Super MAGA-Trumpy, Trump-adjacent and not so much-Trump.”

Lately, he said, almost everyone has pushed themselves into the “super-MAGA-Trumpy” lane.

“As a Republican, you have to be careful how far to the right you go to win the primary so you don’t get irreparable harm in the general election,” said Nicholas.

Mr Lamb faces a similar challenge to a moderate in the Democratic primary.

He is sure to be hit hard by some previous positions, including his opposition to a ban on assault weapons in 2019 and his vote last year to permanently extend the Trump administration’s individual tax cuts.

More recently, Mr. Lamb has kept pace with his party: in April he supported Mr. Biden’s demand to ban the sale of future offensive weapons; in May he advocated the end of filibuster.

Mr Lamb said in an interview that the attack on the Capitol was a turning point for him, particularly in how Republican leaders came to accept Mr Trump’s false accusation that the 2020 vote had been rigged.

He alluded to this again in his announcement on Friday: “If you take such a big lie and put it at the center of the party,” he said of the GOP leaders, “you can’t expect them to talk about anything else Tell the truth”. . “

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Wanting the Mandate They Crave, Army Leaders Race to Vaccinate Troops

Short of the Mandate They Crave, Military Leaders Race to Vaccinate Troops

COLORADO SPRINGS – Three soldiers in camouflage huddled around a table at a popular burrito restaurant near Fort Carson on Friday, chewing over the announcement that the military could soon vaccinate all troops against coronavirus. Two of the soldiers had already received the shot. One didn’t have it.

The military had ordered her to be given a quiver of other vaccines, including the annual flu shot. The big difference to this one was that she finally had a choice.

“Honestly, if the Army wants something from you, they’ll force you. It was still voluntary, so I just postponed it, ”said the unvaccinated soldier, adding that a busy schedule and fear of side effects made her delay easier.

The soldier declined to give her name because she was not allowed to speak to the news media, but said that although most of the soldiers in the post’s 25,000 active soldiers are vaccinated, she has other concerns and takes advantage of a rare digression not often granted the base.

That may change soon. Late on Thursday evening, the Pentagon announced that all military and civilian employees would be asked to prove that they were vaccinated or undergoing masking, physical distancing, and regular tests and travel restrictions, just as President Biden would do with the rest of the citizens. The new requirements bring the armed forces one step closer to a mandate.

Forced syringes are a standard practice for the military, requiring from training camps that troops be vaccinated against at least a dozen diseases. For now, however, the military is trying to navigate how more troops can be fired without simply issuing an order.

Of the 1,336,000 active military personnel, about 64 percent are fully vaccinated, and more than 60 percent of Americans over 18 are fully vaccinated. But for the military, that quota is unacceptably low because it is difficult to send unvaccinated troops to countries with strict local restrictions, and because an increase in the virus among troops can cripple readiness.

Military leaders cannot request the shots because the coronavirus vaccines are not fully approved by the Food and Drug Administration and are only approved in an emergency. Mr Biden could order mandatory vaccination for troops but was reluctant to exercise that power, and Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III previously said he would not be comfortable with a mandate until vaccines are fully approved.

Although coronavirus vaccines have become a political focus among civilians, several military leaders said they did not expect much resistance if an order was issued because troops are used to getting mandatory shots. But while following orders is central to military culture, they added, the soldier’s axiom is “never voluntary for anything” as well.

At the same time, the U.S. military knows how deadly infectious diseases can be because it has fought them for centuries.

In the winter of 1777, the Continental Army’s smallpox was so raging that the ability to continue the fight was in doubt. General George Washington proposed the very first mass vaccination by infecting healthy troops with the pus of their suffering comrades. The practice, which often led to illness but drastically reduced deaths, profoundly polarized. Many colonists viewed it as a conspiracy of the devil, or worse, the crown. Some colonies banned the practice, and in Virginia rioters attacked doctors who offered the treatment.

However, Washington felt it had no other choice, telling one of its medical officers that “the need appears not only to approve but to require the measure.”

Mass vaccination ended the epidemic and may have been crucial to winning the war, said Carol R. Byerly, military medicine historian.

“It was the beginning of the realization that public health is a strategic weapon – and the military has led the way ever since,” said Ms. Byerly.

As new conflicts pushed US forces into new corners of the world, disease often killed far more people than the enemy. Military doctors tried to find ways to fight diseases like typhoid and yellow fever. The troops, some of which served as guinea pigs, were generally not given a say.

“There has always been protest,” Ms. Byerly said, referring to the year 1911, when many soldiers and their families launched a letter campaign against a newly developed smallpox vaccine, which became the first universal, compulsory vaccination in the army. “But the military knows that vaccines are the best weapon. Even if there is controversy, the leaders thought it was worthwhile. “

The ordering of a mandatory vaccination, however, carries its own risks for the military readiness. By the 1990s, the military grew tired of vaccinating the entire force against the anthrax virus. Troop units refused to comply. Hundreds were fined – some with dishonorable layoffs. Others quit in protest. In one Air National Guard squadron, a quarter of pilots dropped out instead of taking the vaccine, affecting the unit’s operational capability.

Anthrax vaccination efforts have been hampered by legal proceedings and supply problems and ultimately reduced to just a small fraction of the high-risk troops.

Without an order, the service branches attempt to encourage members who are hesitant to take the coronavirus vaccine in a way that they believe addresses their specific concerns.

Naval leaders have found that talking about the vaccine as both a weapon and a means of preparedness is most effective. “Our sailors understand that they must wear protective equipment when walking into a hostile or dangerous environment,” said Rear Adm. Bruce L. Gillingham, the Navy surgeon general. “It’s biological body protection.”

In Fort Bragg, NC, a weekly podcast featured troops speaking to Army medical leaders about their concerns about the vaccine.

In a recent interview, Sgt. Colt Joiner and Lt. Col. Owen Price discussed a misconception often raised by young soldiers: that they are at greater risk of dying from the side effects of a gunshot than from Covid-19. This belief is increasingly worrying military commanders as data on the delta variant show high rates of serious illness in young unvaccinated people.

“I’m a 24 year old guy,” said Sergeant Joiner, “I think this isn’t such a big risk for me right now. At the moment I just don’t see it as a priority. “

The notion that the coronavirus is a threat only to older Americans is “eroding,” Colonel Price told him. “The percentage of people your age who see these effects is increasing.”

In Fort Carson this week, an officer in a brigade preparing for the mission proudly said their vaccination rate was 71 percent, well above the Army average. Success, he said, means taking leadership – getting senior soldiers and officers, explaining their choices to the young soldiers, and encouraging them to volunteer.

But was that volunteering actually “volunteering” – the army’s cherished tradition of telling the troops that they are absolutely expected to do something that is technically voluntary?

When asked, the officer laughed. “Yes,” he said. “Probably a little of that.”

Dave Philipps reported from Colorado Springs and Jennifer Steinhauer from Washington.

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New York Mayor’s Race in Chaos After Elections Board Pulls Again Outcomes

New York Mayor’s Race in Chaos After Elections Board Pulls Back Results

The New York City mayor’s race plunged into chaos on Tuesday night when the city Board of Elections released a new tally of votes in the Democratic mayoral primary, and then removed the tabulations from its website after citing a “discrepancy.”

The results released earlier in the day had suggested that the race between Eric Adams and his two closest rivals had tightened significantly.

But just a few hours after releasing the preliminary results, the elections board issued a cryptic tweet revealing a “discrepancy” in the report, saying that it was working with its “technical staff to identify where the discrepancy occurred.”

By Tuesday evening, the tabulations had been taken down, replaced by a new advisory that the ranked-choice results would be available “starting on June 30.”

Then, around 10:30 p.m., the board finally released a statement, explaining that it had failed to remove sample ballot images used to test its ranked-choice voting software. When the board ran the program, it counted “both test and election night results, producing approximately 135,000 additional records,” the statement said. The ranked-choice numbers, it said, would be tabulated again.

The extraordinary sequence of events seeded further confusion about the outcome, and threw the closely watched contest into a new period of uncertainty at a consequential moment for the city.

For the Board of Elections, which has long been plagued by dysfunction and nepotism, this was its first try at implementing ranked-choice voting on a citywide scale. Skeptics had expressed doubts about the board’s ability to pull off the process, though it is used successfully in other cities.

Under ranked-choice voting, voters can list up to five candidates on their ballots in preferential order. If no candidate receives more than 50 percent of first-choice votes in the first round, the winner is decided by a process of elimination: As the lower-polling candidates are eliminated, their votes are reallocated to whichever candidate those voters ranked next, and the process continues until there is a winner.

The Board of Elections released preliminary, unofficial ranked-choice tabulations on Tuesday afternoon, showing that Mr. Adams — who had held a significant advantage on primary night — was narrowly ahead of Kathryn Garcia in the ballots cast in person during early voting or on Primary Day. Maya D. Wiley, who came in second place in the initial vote count, was close behind in third place. The board then took down the results and disclosed the discrepancy.

The results may well be scrambled again: Even after the Board of Elections sorts through the preliminary tally, it must count around 124,000 Democratic absentee ballots. Once they are tabulated, the board will take the new total that includes them and run a new set of ranked-choice elimination rounds, with a final result not expected until mid-July.

Some Democrats, bracing for an acrimonious new chapter in the race, are concerned that the incremental release of results by the Board of Elections — and the discovery of an error — may stir distrust of ranked-choice voting and of the city’s electoral system more broadly.

In a statement late Tuesday night, Ms. Wiley laced into the Board of Elections, calling the error “the result of generations of failures that have gone unaddressed,” and adding: “Sadly it is impossible to be surprised.”

“Today, we have once again seen the mismanagement that has resulted in a lack of confidence in results, not because there is a flaw in our election laws, but because those who implement it have failed too many times,” she said. “The B.O.E. must now count the remainder of the votes transparently and ensure the integrity of the process moving forward.”

Ms. Garcia said the release of the inaccurate tally was “deeply troubling and requires a much more transparent and complete explanation.”

“Every ranked choice and absentee vote must be counted accurately so that all New Yorkers have faith in our democracy and our government,” she said. “I am confident that every candidate will accept the final results and support whomever the voters have elected.”

And Mr. Adams noted the “unfortunate” error by the Board of Elections and emphasized the importance of handling election results correctly.

“It is critical that New Yorkers are confident in their electoral system, especially as we rank votes in a citywide election for the first time,” he said in a statement released on Tuesday night. “We appreciate the board’s transparency and acknowledgment of their error. We look forward to the release of an accurate, updated simulation, and the timely conclusion of this critical process.”

If elected, Mr. Adams would be the city’s second Black mayor, after David N. Dinkins. Some of Mr. Adams’s supporters have already cast the ranked-choice process as an attempt to disenfranchise voters of color, an argument that intensified among some backers on Tuesday afternoon as the race had appeared to tighten, and is virtually certain to escalate should he lose his primary night lead to Ms. Garcia, who is white.

Surrogates for Mr. Adams have suggested without evidence that an apparent ranked-choice alliance between Ms. Garcia and another rival, Andrew Yang, could amount to an attempt to suppress the votes of Black and Latino New Yorkers; Mr. Adams himself claimed that the alliance was aimed at preventing a Black or Latino candidate from winning the race.

In the final days of the race, Ms. Garcia and Mr. Yang campaigned together across the city, especially in neighborhoods that are home to sizable Asian American communities, and appeared together on campaign literature.

To advocates of ranked-choice voting, the round-by-round shuffling of outcomes is part of the process of electing a candidate with broad appeal. But if Ms. Garcia or Ms. Wiley were to prevail, the process — which was approved by voters in a 2019 ballot measure — would likely attract fresh scrutiny, with some of Mr. Adams’s backers and others already urging a new referendum on it.

By Tuesday night, though, it was the Board of Elections that was attracting ire from seemingly all corners.

Betsy Gotbaum, the city’s former public advocate who now runs Citizens Union, a good-government group, warned that “the entire country is watching” the Board of Elections. “New Yorkers deserve elections, and election administrators, that they can have the utmost faith in,” Ms. Gotbaum added.

A comparison between first-place vote totals released on primary night and those released on Tuesday offered some insight into how the 135,000 erroneous votes were distributed. The bottom four candidates received a total of 42,000 new votes, roughly four times their actual vote total; the number of write-in ballots also skyrocketed to 17,516 from 1,336. Mr. Adams and Mr. Yang received the highest number of new votes.

It was not known, however, how the test votes were reallocated during the ranked-choice tabulations, making it impossible to determine how they affected the preliminary results that were released and then retracted.

When accurate vote counts are in place, it is difficult, but not unheard-of for a trailing candidate in a ranked-choice election to eventually win the race through later rounds of voting — that happened in Oakland, Calif., in 2010, and nearly occurred in San Francisco in 2018.

The winner of New York’s Democratic primary, who is almost certain to become the city’s next mayor, will face Curtis Sliwa, the founder of the Guardian Angels, who won the Republican primary.

According to the now-withdrawn tabulation released Tuesday, Ms. Wiley, a former counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio, nearly made it to the final round. She finished closely behind Ms. Garcia, the former sanitation commissioner, before being eliminated in the penultimate round of the preliminary exercise.

After the count of in-person ballots last week, Ms. Garcia had trailed Ms. Wiley by about 2.8 percentage points. Asked if she had been in touch with Ms. Wiley’s team, Ms. Garcia suggested there had been staff-level conversations.

“The campaigns have been speaking to each other,” Ms. Garcia said in a phone call on Tuesday afternoon, saying the two candidates had not yet spoken directly. “Hopefully we don’t have to step in with attorneys. But it is about really ensuring that New York City’s voices are heard.”

Ms. Wiley ran well to the left of Ms. Garcia on a number of vital policy matters, including around policing and on some education questions. Either candidate would be the first woman elected mayor of New York, and Ms. Wiley would be the city’s first Black female mayor.

Mr. Adams, a former police captain and a relative moderate on several key issues, was a non-starter for many progressive voters who may have preferred Ms. Garcia and her focus on competence over any especially ideological message.

But early results suggested that Mr. Adams had significant strength among working-class voters of color, and some traction among white voters with moderate views.

City Councilman I. Daneek Miller, an Adams supporter who is pressing for a new referendum on ranked-choice voting, suggested in a text message on Tuesday that the system had opened the door to “an attempt to eliminate the candidate of moderate working people and traditionally marginalized communities,” as he implicitly criticized the Yang-Garcia alliance.

“It is incumbent on us now to address the issue of ranked voting and how it is being weaponized against a wide portion of the public,” said Mr. Miller, the co-chair of the Black, Latino, and Asian Caucus on the City Council.

Other close observers of the election separately expressed discomfort with the decision to release a ranked-choice tally without accounting for absentee ballots.

“There is real danger that voters will come to believe a set of facts about the race that will be disproven when all votes are in,” said Ben Greenfield, a senior survey data analyst at Change Research, which conducted polling for a pro-Garcia PAC. “The risk is that this could take a system that’s already new and confusing and increase people’s sense of mistrust.”

Dana Rubinstein, Jeffery C. Mays, Anne Barnard, Andy Newman and Mihir Zaveri contributed reporting.

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Voting Rights Invoice Falters in Congress as States Race Forward

Voting Rights Bill Falters in Congress as States Race Ahead

WASHINGTON — In the national struggle over voting rights, Democrats have rested their hopes for turning back a wave of new restrictions in Republican-led states and expanding ballot access on their narrow majorities in Congress. Failure, they have repeatedly insisted, “is not an option.”

But as Republican efforts to clamp down on voting prevail across the country, the drive to enact the most sweeping elections overhaul in generations is faltering in the Senate. With a self-imposed Labor Day deadline for action, Democrats are struggling to unite around a strategy to overcome solid Republican opposition and an almost certain filibuster.

Republicans in Congress have dug in against the measure, with even the most moderate dismissing it as bloated and overly prescriptive. That leaves Democrats no option for passing it other than to try to force the bill through by destroying the filibuster rule — which requires 60 votes to put aside any senator’s objection — to pass it on a simple majority, party-line vote.

But Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, the Democrats’ decisive swing vote, has repeatedly pledged to protect the filibuster and is refusing to sign on to the voting rights bill. He calls the legislation “too darn broad” and too partisan, despite endorsing such proposals in past sessions. Other Democrats also remain uneasy about some of its core provisions.

Navigating the 800-page For the People Act, or Senate Bill 1, through an evenly split chamber was never going to be an easy task, even after it passed the House with only Democratic votes. But the Democrats’ strategy for moving the measure increasingly hinges on the longest of long shots: persuading Mr. Manchin and the other 49 Democrats to support both the bill and the gutting of the filibuster.

“We ought to be able to pass it — it really would be transformative,” Senator Chris Coons, Democrat of Delaware, said recently. “But if we have several members of our caucus who have just point-blank said, ‘I will not break the filibuster,’ then what are we even doing?”

Summarizing the party’s challenge, another Democratic senator who asked to remain anonymous to discuss strategy summed it up this way: The path to passage is as narrow as it is rocky, but Democrats have no choice but to die trying to get across.

The hand-wringing is likely to only intensify in the coming weeks. Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, vowed to force a floor debate in late June, testing Mr. Manchin’s opposition and laying the groundwork to justify scrapping the filibuster rule.

“Hopefully, we can get bipartisan support,” Mr. Schumer said. “So far, we have not seen any glimmers on S. 1, and if not, everything is on the table.”

The stakes, both politically and for the nation’s election systems, are enormous.

The bill’s failure would allow the enactment of restrictive new voting measures in Republican-led states such as Georgia, Florida and Montana to take effect without legislative challenge. Democrats fear that would empower the Republican Party to pursue a strategy of marginalizing Black and young voters based on former President Donald J. Trump’s false claims of election fraud.

If the measure passed, Democrats could effectively overpower the states by putting in place new national mandates that they set up automatic voter registration, hold regular no-excuse early and mail-in voting, and restore the franchise to felons who have served their terms. The legislation would also end partisan gerrymandering of congressional districts, restructure the Federal Election Commission and require super PACs to disclose their big donors.

A legion of advocacy groups and civil rights veterans argue that the fight is just starting.

“This game isn’t done — we are just gearing up for a floor fight,” said Tiffany Muller, the president of End Citizens United and Let America Vote, which are spending millions of dollars on television ads in states like West Virginia. “At the end of the day, every single senator is going to have to make a choice if they are going to vote to uphold the right to vote or uphold an arcane Senate rule. That is the situation that creates the pressure to act.”

Proponents of the overhaul on and off Capitol Hill have focused their attention for weeks on Mr. Manchin, a centrist who has expressed deep concerns about the consequences of pushing through voting legislation with the support of only one party. So far, they have taken a deliberately hands-off approach, betting that the senator will realize that there is no real compromise to be had with Republicans.

There is little sign that he has come to that conclusion on his own. Democrats huddled last week in a large conference room atop a Senate office building to discuss the bill, making sure Mr. Manchin was there for an elaborate presentation about why it was vital. Mr. Schumer invited Marc E. Elias, the well-known Democratic election lawyer, to explain in detail the extent of the restrictions being pushed through Republican statehouses around the country. Senators as ideologically diverse as Raphael Warnock of Georgia, a progressive, and Jon Tester of Montana, a centrist, warned what might happen if the party did not act.

Mr. Manchin listened silently and emerged saying his position had not changed.

“I’m learning,” he told reporters. “Basically, we’re going to be talking and negotiating, talking and negotiating, and talking and negotiating.”

Despite the intense focus on him, Mr. Manchin is not the only hurdle. Senator Kyrsten Sinema, Democrat of Arizona, is a co-sponsor of the election overhaul, but she has also pledged not to change the filibuster. A handful of other Democrats have shied away from definitive statements but are no less eager to do away with the rule.

“I’m not to that point yet,” Mr. Tester said. He also signaled he might be more comfortable modifying the bill, saying he “wouldn’t lose any sleep” if Democrats dropped a provision that would create a new public campaign financing system for congressional candidates. Republicans have pilloried it.

“First of all, we have to figure out if we have all the Democrats on board. Then we have to figure out if we have any Republicans on board,” Mr. Tester said. “Then we can answer that question.”

Republicans are hoping that by banding together, they can doom the measure’s prospects. They succeeded in deadlocking a key committee considering the legislation, though their opposition did not bar it from advancing to the full Senate. They accuse Democrats of using the voting rights provisions to distract from other provisions in the bill, which they argue are designed to give Democrats lasting political advantages. If they can prevent Mr. Manchin and others from changing their minds on keeping the filibuster, they will have thwarted the entire endeavor.

The Battle Over Voting Rights

Amid months of false claims by former President Donald J. Trump that the 2020 election was stolen from him, Republican lawmakers in many states are marching ahead to pass laws making it harder to vote and changing how elections are run, frustrating Democrats and even some election officials in their own party.

    • A Key Topic: The rules and procedures of elections have become a central issue in American politics. The Brennan Center for Justice, a liberal-leaning law and justice institute at New York University, counts 361 bills in 47 states that seek to tighten voting rules. At the same time, 843 bills have been introduced with provisions to improve access to voting.
    • The Basic Measures: The restrictions vary by state but can include limiting the use of ballot drop boxes, adding identification requirements for voters requesting absentee ballots, and doing away with local laws that allow automatic registration for absentee voting.
    • More Extreme Measures: Some measures go beyond altering how one votes, including tweaking Electoral College and judicial election rules, clamping down on citizen-led ballot initiatives, and outlawing private donations that provide resources for administering elections.
    • Pushback: This Republican effort has led Democrats in Congress to find a way to pass federal voting laws. A sweeping voting rights bill passed the House in March, but faces difficult obstacles in the Senate. Republicans have remained united against the proposal and even if the bill became law, it would likely face steep legal challenges.
    • Florida: Measures here include limiting the use of drop boxes, adding more identification requirements for absentee ballots, requiring voters to request an absentee ballot for each election, limiting who could collect and drop off ballots, and further empowering partisan observers during the ballot-counting process.
    • Texas: The next big move could happen here, where Republicans in the legislature are brushing aside objections from corporate titans and moving on a vast election bill that would be among the most severe in the nation. It would impose new restrictions on early voting, ban drive-through voting, threaten election officials with harsher penalties and greatly empower partisan poll watchers.
    • Other States: Arizona’s Republican-controlled Legislature passed a bill that would limit the distribution of mail ballots. The bill, which includes removing voters from the state’s Permanent Early Voting List if they do not cast a ballot at least once every two years, may be only the first in a series of voting restrictions to be enacted there. Georgia Republicans in March enacted far-reaching new voting laws that limit ballot drop-boxes and make the distribution of water within certain boundaries of a polling station a misdemeanor. Iowa has also imposed new limits, including reducing the period for early voting and in-person voting hours on Election Day. And bills to restrict voting have been moving through the Republican-led Legislature in Michigan.

“I don’t think they can convince 50 of their members this is the right thing to do,” said Senator Roy Blunt, Republican of Missouri. “I think it would be hard to explain giving government money to politicians, the partisan F.E.C.”

In the meantime, Mr. Manchin is pushing the party to embrace what he sees as a more palatable alternative: legislation named after Representative John Lewis of Georgia, the civil rights icon who died last year, that would restore a key provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that the Supreme Court struck down in 2013.

That measure would revive a mandate that states and localities with patterns of discrimination clear election law changes with the federal government in advance, a requirement Mr. Manchin has suggested should be applied nationwide.

The senator has said he prefers the approach because it would restore a practice that was the law of the land for decades and enjoyed broad bipartisan support of the kind necessary to ensure the public’s trust in election law.

In reality, though, that bill has no better chance of becoming law without getting rid of the filibuster. Since the 2013 decision, when the justices asked Congress to send them an updated pre-clearance formula for reinstatement, Republicans have shown little interest in doing so.

Only one, Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, supports legislation reinstating the voting rights provision in the Senate. Asked recently about the prospect of building more Republican support, Ms. Murkowski pointed out that she had been unable to attract another co-sponsor from her party in the six years since the bill was first introduced.

Complicating matters, it has yet to actually be reintroduced this term and may not be for months. Because any new enforcement provision would have to pass muster with the courts, Democrats are proceeding cautiously with a series of public hearings.

All that has created an enormous time crunch. Election lawyers have advised Democrats that they have until Labor Day to make changes for the 2022 elections. Beyond that, they could easily lose control of the House and Senate.

“The time clock for this is running out as we approach a midterm election when we face losing the Senate and even the House,” said Representative Terri A. Sewell, a Democrat who represents the so-called Civil Rights Belt of Alabama and is the lead sponsor of the bill named for Mr. Lewis.

“If the vote and protecting the rights of all Americans to exercise that most precious right isn’t worth overcoming a procedural filibuster,” she said, “then what is?”

Luke Broadwater contributed reporting.

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Politics

Concentrating on ‘Important Race Concept,’ Republicans Rattle American Faculties

Targeting 'Critical Race Theory,' Republicans Rattle American Schools

Still, he acknowledged that Republicans had “figured out how to message this.”

The messaging goes back to Mr. Trump, who, in the final weeks of the 2020 campaign, announced the formation of the 1776 Commission, set up explicitly to link what he said was “left-wing indoctrination” in schools to the sometimes violent protests over police killings.

A report by the commission was derided by mainstream historians; Mr. Biden canceled the project on his first day in office, but its impact endures on the right.

Media Matters for America, a liberal group, documented a surge of negative coverage of critical race theory by Fox News beginning in mid-2020 and spiking in April, with 235 mentions. And the Pew Research Center found last year that Americans were deeply divided over their perceptions of racial discrimination. Over 60 percent of conservatives said it was a bigger problem that people see discrimination where it does not exist, rather than ignoring discrimination that really does exist. Only 9 percent of liberals agreed.

Some Democratic strategists said the issue was a political liability for their party. Ruy Teixeira, a senior fellow at the left-leaning Center for American Progress, recently wrote, “The steady march of ‘anti-racist’ ideology” into school curriculums “will generate a backlash among normie parents.”

In an interview, he criticized leading Democrats for not calling out critical race theory because of their fear that “it will bring down the wrath of the woker elements of the party.”

In Loudoun County, Va., dueling parent groups are squaring off, one that calls itself “anti-racist” and the other opposed to what it sees as the creep of critical race theory in the school district, which enrolls 81,000 students from a rapidly diversifying region outside Washington.

After a 2019 report found a racial achievement gap, disproportionate discipline meted out to Black and Hispanic students, and the common use of racial slurs in schools, administrators adopted a “plan to combat systemic racism.” It calls for mandatory teacher training in “systemic oppression and implicit bias.”

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Business

Black Wall Road was shattered 100 years in the past. How Tulsa race bloodbath was coated up

Black Wall Street was shattered 100 years ago. How Tulsa race massacre was covered up

Ruins of the Greenwood District after the massacre of African Americans in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in June 1921. American National Red Cross photograph collection.

GHI | Universal Images Group | Getty Images

A century ago this week, the wealthiest U.S. Black community was burned to the ground.

At the turn of the 20th century, the Greenwood District of Tulsa, Oklahoma, became one of the first communities in the country thriving with Black entrepreneurial businesses. The prosperous town, founded by many descendants of slaves, earned a reputation as the Black Wall Street of America and became a harbor for African Americans in a highly segregated city under Jim Crow laws.

On May 31, 1921, a white mob turned Greenwood upside down in one of the worst racial massacres in U.S. history. In the matter of hours, 35 square blocks of the vibrant Black community were turned into smoldering ashes. Countless Black people were killed — estimates ranged from 55 to more than 300 — and 1,000 homes and businesses were looted and set on fire.

A group of people looking at smoke in the distance coming from damaged properties following the Tulsa, Oklahoma, racial massacre, June 1921.

Oklahoma Historical Society | Archive Photos | Getty Images

Yet for the longest time, the massacre received scant mentions in newspapers, textbooks and civil and governmental conversations. It wasn’t until 2000 that the slaughter was included in the Oklahoma public schools’ curriculum, and it did not enter American history textbooks until recent years. The 1921 Tulsa Race Riot Commission was formed to investigate in 1997 and officially released a report in 2001.

“The massacre was actively covered up in the white community in Tulsa for nearly a half century,” said Scott Ellsworth, a professor of Afro American and African studies at the University of Michigan and author of “The Ground Breaking” about the Tulsa massacre.

“When I started my research in the 1970s, I discovered that official National Guard reports and other documents were all missing,” Ellsworth said. “Tulsa’s two daily white newspapers, they went out of their way for decades not to mention the massacre. Researchers who would try to do work on this as late as the early 1970s had their lives threatened and had their career threatened.”

The body of an unidentified Black victim of the Tulsa race massacre lies in the street as a white man stands over him, Tulsa, Oklahoma, June 1, 1921.

Greenwood Cultural Center | Archive Photos | Getty Images

In the week following the massacre, Tulsa’s chief of police ordered his officers to go to all the photography studios in Tulsa and confiscate all the pictures taken of the carnage, Ellsworth said.

These photos, which were later discovered and became the materials the Oklahoma Commission used to study the massacre, eventually landed in the lap of Michelle Place at Tulsa Historical Society & Museum in 2001.

“It took me about four days to get through the box because the photographs were so horrific. I had never seen those kinds of pictures before,” Place said. “I didn’t know anything about the riot before I came to work here. I never heard of it. Since I’ve been here, I’ve been at my desk to guard them to the very best of my ability.”

Patients recovering from injuries sustained in the Tulsa massacre. American National Red Cross Photograph Collection, November 1921.

Universal History Archive | Universal Images Group | Getty Images

The Tulsa museum was founded in the late 1990s, but visitors couldn’t find a trace of the race massacre until 2012 when Place became executive director, determined to tell all of Tulsa’s stories. A digital collection of the photographs was eventually made available for viewing online.

“There’s still a significant number of people in our community who don’t want to look at it, who don’t want to talk about it,” Place said.

‘The silence is layered’

Not only did Tulsa city officials cover up the bloodbath, but they also deliberately shifted the narrative of the massacre by calling it a “riot” and blaming the Black community for what went down, according to Alicia Odewale, an archaeologist at University of Tulsa.

The massacre also wasn’t discussed publicly in the African American community either for a long time. First out of fear — if it happened once, it can happen again.

“You are seeing the perpetrators walking freely on the streets,” Odewale said. “You are in the Jim Crow South, and there are racial terrors happening across the country at this time. They are protecting themselves for a reason.”

Moreover, this became such a traumatic event for survivors, and much like Holocaust survivors and World War II veterans, many of them didn’t want to burden their children and grandchildren with these horrible memories.

Ellsworth said he knows of descendants of massacre survivors who didn’t find out about it until they were in their 40s and 50s.

“The silence is layered just as the trauma is layered,” Odewale said. “The historical trauma is real and that trauma lingers especially because there’s no justice, no accountability and no reparation or monetary compensation.”

A truck carries African Americans during race massacre in Tulsa, Oklahoma, U.S. in 1921.

Alvin C. Krupnick Co. | National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Records | Library of Congress | via Reuters

What triggered the massacre?

On May 31, 1921, Dick Rowland, a 19-year old Black shoeshiner, tripped and fell in an elevator and his hand accidentally caught the shoulder of Sarah Page, a white 17-year-old operator. Page screamed and Rowland was seen running away.

Police were summoned but Page refused to press charges. However, by that afternoon, there was already talks of lynching Rowland on the streets of white Tulsa. The tension then escalated after the white newspaper Tulsa Tribune ran a front-page story entitled “Nab Negro for Attacking Girl In Elevator,” which accused Rowland of stalking, assault and rape.

In the Tribune, there was also a now-lost editorial entitled “To Lynch Tonight,” according to Ellsworth. When the Works Progress Administration went to microfilm the old issues of the Tribune in the 1930s, the op-ed had already been torn out of the newspaper, Ellsworth said.

Many believe the newspaper coverage undoubtedly played a part in sparking the massacre.

The aftermath

People stand outside the Black Wall Street T-Shirts and Souvenirs store at North Greenwood Avenue in the Greenwood District of Tulsa Oklahoma, U.S., on Thursday, June 18, 2020.

Christopher Creese | Bloomberg | Getty Images

For Black Tulsans, the massacre resulted in a decline in home ownership, occupational status and educational attainment, according to a recent study through the 1940s led by Harvard University’s Alex Albright.

Today, there are only a few Black businesses on the single remaining block in the Greenwood district once hailed as the Black Wall Street.

This month, three survivors of the 1921 massacre — ages 100, 106 and 107 — appeared before a congressional committee, and a Georgia congressman introduced a bill that would make it easier for them to seek reparations.

Rev. Dr. Robert Turner of the Historic Vernon Chapel A.M.E. Church holds his weekly Reparations March ahead of the 100 year anniversary of the 1921 Tulsa Massacre in Tulsa, Oklahoma, U.S., May 26, 2021.

Polly Irungu | Reuters

Meanwhile, historians and archaeologists continued to unearth what was lost for decades. In October, a mass grave in an Oklahoma cemetery was discovered that could be the remains of at least a dozen identified and unidentified African American massacre victims.

“We are able to look for signs of survival and signs of lives. And really look for those remnants of built Greenwood and not just about how they died,” Odewale said. “Greenwood never left.”

— CNBC’s Yun Li is also co-author of “Eunice Hunton Carter: A Lifelong Fight for Social Justice.”

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Politics

How Ranked-Alternative Voting May Have an effect on New York’s Mayoral Race

How Ranked-Choice Voting Could Affect New York’s Mayoral Race

The competition for the nomination of the Democratic Mayor of New York City is wide open. It’s the kind of race that a ranking vote is designed to help with, with voters backing their top poll without losing the opportunity to weigh the most suitable candidates.

It’s also the type of race that could test one of the main risks of a ranked poll: a phenomenon known as ballot exhaustion. A ballot is considered “exhausted” when every candidate classified by a voter has been eliminated and this ballot is no longer included in the election.

With so many viable candidates and most New Yorkers first-time ranking polls, all the ingredients for a large number of depleted ballots are in place. If the race is close enough, it is a factor that could even decide the choice.

This possibility does not necessarily mean that New Yorkers are worse off when it comes to voting according to the rankings. However, the risk of exhaustion of the ballot paper is an underestimated reason why the alleged advantages are not always recognized when voting by ranking.

Cities and other local governments have polled eight states and across Maine nationwide. It will be used for the first time this year in the New York Mayor’s Race, allowing voters to rate up to five candidates in their order of preference.

If no candidate receives a majority of the first preferential votes, the race is decided by an immediate runoff: the candidate with the fewest votes in first place is eliminated, and the votes of those who preferred the eliminated candidate are voted on the second of these voters transfer decisions. The process continues until a candidate wins a majority of the remaining ballots.

However, such a system is complicated. It urges voters to use a new and unusual set of rules to make many more decisions than they would normally have to make. As a result, many will not rate the maximum number of candidates. There is a possibility that the election result will be different if every voter has filled out a complete voting slip.

A recent poll by the Manhattan Institute / Public Opinion Strategies found evidence that ballot exhaustion could be a major factor in New York’s mayoral elections. The poll, which asked voters to complete the full ballot, found that Eric Adams led Andrew Yang by 52 to 48 percent in a simulated instant runoff election. Behind the top scores lurked a group of 23 percent of respondents who had rated some candidates but had not rated Mr. Yang or Mr. Adams. If these voters had preferred Mr. Yang, the poll might have turned out differently.

A fatigue rate of 23 percent would be pretty high, but not without precedent. In the 2011 San Francisco Mayor’s Race, 27 percent of the ballots were neither of the two candidates who made it to the finals. And, on average, 12 percent of the ballots in the three special city council elections held in New York City this year were exhausted.

Even a lower percentage of depleted ballots can make a difference in a tight race. An analogous case is the special mayoral election in San Francisco in 2018, in which London Breed prevailed by just under one percentage point. In that race, 9 percent of the ballots rated neither Ms. Breed nor runner-up Mark Leno.

It’s impossible to know for sure, but there are plausible reasons to believe that if each voter had chosen one of the two final candidates, Mr. Leno would have won the election. Mr. Leno, for example, won broadcast votes – those cast by voters who did not select either Ms. Breed or Mr. Leno as their first choice – by a margin of 69 to 31 percent; he would have won if the exhausted ballots had expressed a similar preference.

The large number of depleted ballots in ranked elections might come as a bit of a surprise as the format is designed to ensure voters don’t waste their ballots by supporting non-viable candidates. In the archetypal case, the choice of rank could allow voters to endorse a small party candidate like Ralph Nader without the risk of jeopardizing their preferred large party candidate, whom they could safely move to second place.

Voters, however, do not always have the same degree of clarity about which candidates will make the final round of voting as they would have in the 2000 presidential election when Mr Nader finished third as the Green candidate with almost three million votes. Even without eligibility to vote, the primaries often have flowing multi-candidate areas where clear favorites in the general election are nowhere near as obvious as a Democrat versus a Republican.

Fortunately, ranking voting tends to increase the number of options available to voters and tarnish what may otherwise be a relatively clear final choice. Interest groups and ideological factions have less incentive to group behind a single candidate in a ranked election, knowing that their voters can still group behind a single candidate on election day.

Partly as a result, the number of depleted ballots is highest in wide-open races, where voters have the least clarity about the likely endgame.

In the three ranked special elections for New York City Council seats, the number of ballots exhausted was higher in races without a strong first-round candidate. For example, when the top candidate had only 28 percent of the vote in the first ballot in the 15th district, 18 percent of voters had not rated either of the two best candidates.

Understand the NYC Mayoral Race

    • Who is running for mayor? There are more than a dozen people in the running to become New York’s next mayor, and the primary is on June 22nd. Here is an overview of the candidates.
    • Get to know the candidates: We’ve hired leading mayoral candidates on everything from police reform and climate change to their preferred bagel order and training routine.
    • What is a ranking poll? New York City started voting in the primary this year, and voters can list up to five candidates in order of preference. Confused? We can help.

In the mayor’s primary today, the New York Democrats can’t be sure whether there will likely be a final matchup. There are currently 13 Democratic candidates in the running, at least five of whom can be considered front runners. Andrew Yang, the lead polling candidate for most of the year, has declined in recent polls; others, like Kathryn Garcia, seem to be on the rise. With so much uncertainty, even political junkies may not be entirely sure whether their vote will have an impact in the finals.

Voters who are not political junkies have a very different challenge. Voting according to the ranking is demanding. Voters have to make informed judgments about many more candidates than they would otherwise. Less informed voters are less likely to make such judgments and are therefore less likely to rate the maximum number of candidates, which increases the likelihood that they will not list either of the last two candidates on the ballot.

Other voters may not fully understand how ranking works. In a NY1 / Ipsos poll in April, only 53 percent of likely voters said they were very familiar with the ranking and 28 percent said they were uncomfortable with it.

According to a 2004 study by the Public Research Institute, only 36 percent of San Francisco voters who did not fully understand the ranking rated the maximum number of candidates in the 2004 mayoral contest, compared with 63 percent of those who said at least they did understood pretty well.

In order to take full advantage of the leaderboard choice, voters need to know something that is often not given: it works through the instant drain. This may seem obvious, but it is not mentioned on the ballot, it is not mentioned in the educational material sent by the city (and received at my address), and it is not highlighted on the city’s election website. There isn’t even an explanation as to why candidates are ranked.

Without an explanation of how their ballots affect election results, voters may not understand why it is in their best interest to rate the maximum number of candidates.

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Politics

Darkish Cash within the New York Mayor’s Race

Dark Money in the New York Mayor’s Race

The New York mayor’s race already has a national political touch thanks to one man: businessman Andrew Yang, whose long-term campaign for the nomination of the Democratic President began to falter at the beginning of last year, who is now considered to be the front runner in the city’s mayoral election. (That’s despite his talent for making a moan on Twitter.)

But it’s not just personalities that bridge the gap between local and national politics. It’s the money too.

This mayoral election is the first in town to feature super PACs – the dark money groups that emerged after the 2010 US Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v Federal Election Commission.

But it’s also the first race in which a number of candidates use a city policy that allows campaigns to gain access to more generous public matching funds based on their base support.

With the possibly decisive Democratic primary in just over two months, our Metro reporters Dana Rubinstein and Jeffery C. Mays wrote an article on how the hunt for super PAC cash makes the race complicated – and raises ethical questions about some campaigns, including some that are also receiving public matching funding. Dana took a moment on her Friday afternoon to brief me on the state of affairs.

Hello Dana. Citizens United’s decision was made in 2010. However, it seems like this is the first time we’ve heard of Super PACs being used on a large scale in the New York Mayor’s race. How does this development affect the city’s redesigned Matching Funds policy, which aims to encourage small donations? Are the guidelines conflicting – or, as a source in your story put it, “like mending part of your roof and the water finds another way in”?

The 2013 Mayor Primary School had some independent expenditure (or “IE”) activities, but they were not candidate-specific – with one possible exception. There was a super PAC called New York City is not for sale that was candidate specific in the sense that it targeted one candidate, Christine Quinn, and whose funding was received from Bill de Blasio supporters. But this is really the first time we’ve seen candidate-specific IEs. As they have multiplied at the national level, New York candidates have oriented themselves towards the national scene.

If you speak to people at the Brennan Center who are big supporters of the Matching Funds program, they will point it out and say that voters should take courage as it is proving to be a success in many ways. The six mayoral candidates who had qualified for Matching Funds this year were most of them. Funds will be distributed based on the number of New York City voters contributing to the campaign, and that means someone like Dianne Morales, who has no electoral history and wasn’t a big player at all in the New York political scene prior to this election able to make a real argument for mayor. She can start a real campaign. In that round, she received $ 2 million in matching funding.

But then you have this parallel universe of super PAC money. And in some cases, you have candidates who receive the appropriate funding – that’s our taxpayers’ money – and benefit from Super PACs. Of course, super PACs should be independent and not coordinate with campaigns, but it’s hard for some voters to see that and think it’s an ideal scenario.

Basically we have two parallel fundraising systems: One is almost completely unregulated, the other is very strictly regulated and contains tax money.

Who will lead the race for Super PAC money in New York? And what’s the overall state of the race these days, money matters?

Shaun Donovan, the former Housing Secretary under President Barack Obama, participates in the Matching Funds program and has a Super PAC. Scott Stringer, the City Comptroller, also has a Super PAC – albeit a much less lucrative one – and is raising appropriate funds as well. Andrew Yang has a super PAC that was started by a longtime friend of his name, David Rose. It has raised a nominal amount of money, but no one has the illusion that it isn’t going to raise a lot of money anytime soon. And there’s this other super-PAC, linked to Yang and supposedly in the works, involving Lis Smith, who was involved in Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign.

Then there’s Ray McGuire, a former Citigroup executive and one of the most senior African-American bank managers of all time. He has a super PAC that has raised $ 4 million from all sorts of recognizable names. You spend a lot with the aim of increasing its awareness.

As for the state of the race, we have no idea. As you can confirm, there has been virtually no credible poll here. In terms of the polls available, there is some consistency in what they propose: Yang has a head start, but half of the voters are undecided. You have Eric Adams, Scott Stringer, Maya Wiley, and then the rest of the pack.

It is both too early to say and alarmingly close to the actual election day, June 22nd. We really have no idea where things are. If you add to this ranking voting that’s new this year, this really is an open question.

You mentioned Shaun Donovan earlier, whose story featured prominently in the article you and Jeff just wrote. Let us know what’s going on there.

In addition to being the former housing secretary for Obama, he was also the budget manager. So he’s a very well respected technocrat who is also the son of a wealthy ad tech manager. Someone created a super PAC to support his candidacy for mayor. This Super PAC raised just over $ 2 million, and exactly $ 2 million of that sum was donated by his father.

It is entirely within the realm of possibility that his father said, “You know what? I really love my son. I think he would be a great mayor. I’ll fund his super PAC. ”Without any coordination on how the money would be used. However, it is difficult for some people to imagine a scenario in which the father and son do not talk about such things. Or maybe not! The point is, it’s almost undetectable, isn’t it?

There’s a lot of winking and nodding in this stuff, and you don’t necessarily need direct coordination to have effective coordination.

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Is there anything you think we are missing? Do you want to see more? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com.

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Entertainment

Did the Music Trade Change? A Race ‘Report Card’ Is on the Manner.

Did the Music Industry Change? A Race ‘Report Card’ Is on the Way.

Last summer, as the protests over the death of George Floyd raged, the music industry began to look closely at itself in terms of race – how it treats black artists, how black workers at music companies fare, how fair money across the board Company flows.

Major record companies, streaming services, and broadcasters have pledged hundreds of millions of dollars in donations, convened task forces, and promised to take concrete steps to diversify their ranks and correct inequalities. Artists like Weeknd and BTS donated money to support social justice, and Erykah Badu and Kelis signaled their support for economic reform in the music industry.

Everything seemed to be on the table. Even the term “urban” in radio formats and marketing – a racist euphemism for some, a sign of pride and sophistication for others – has been scrutinized. However, there was still great skepticism about whether the company was really determined to make significant changes, or whether its donations and lofty statements were more a matter of crisis PR

The Black Music Action Coalition, a group of artist managers, lawyers, and others, was formed last summer with the aim of holding the industry accountable. A “Testimony” is due to be released in June showing how well the various music companies have kept their promises and commitments to progress.

The report details the steps companies have taken towards race parity and tracks whether and where promised donations have been made. It also examines the number of black executives in leading music companies and the power they hold, as well as the number of black people sitting on their boards. Future reports will delve deeper into issues like industry equality itself, said Binta Niambi Brown and Willie Stiggers, aka Prophet, the coalition co-chairs in an interview this week.

“Our struggle is way bigger than just whether or not you wrote a check,” said Prophet, an artist manager who works with Asian Doll, Layton Greene, and other acts. “But the fact that you said you would write a check, we want to make sure that money was actually given and that it went to a place that actually hit the veins of the black community.”

The report, written by Naima Cochrane, a journalist and former label manager, is based on the annual media studies by advocacy group GLAAD, which track the depiction of LGBTQ characters in film and television and assign ratings to the various companies behind them. It is scheduled to be released June 19 through June 19, the annual public holiday marking the end of slavery in the United States.

The coalition’s public statements have made it clear that it sees itself as a stern and unwavering judge of the music industry, which has a dark history of exploiting black artists, despite the fact that black music has long been and remains its most important product. Last summer, an online campaign called #BlackoutTuesday produced painful comments that many black executives still feel are marginalized to this day, depending on white supervisors who are more empowered and make more money.

Brown, a label manager and artist manager, said the goal of the report was not punishment, but encouragement.

“We want to do it in a way that is more carrots than whip so we can continue to incentivize good behavior,” she said. “We want to hold people accountable, not cancel.”

Most major music companies have hired diversity officers and promoted some top black executives to positions equivalent to their white counterparts, although there are still only a handful of blacks at the top of the board.

A number of outside studies were also commissioned to examine diversity within the industry, including one from the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative at the University of Southern California and another from the Recording Academy, Berklee College of Music, and Arizona State University about Women in Music.

However, there has been relatively little public debate about how to look at artist contracts, including those from past decades, and how to cure unfair terms.

One company, BMG, examined thousands of contracts and found that out of 15 catalogs it owns that contain rosters of both black and non-black artists, 11 showed no evidence of racial discrimination. Among the four companies, the company found a “statistically significant negative correlation between being black and lower registered license fees” of 1.1 to 3.4 percentage points. BMG has promised to take action to correct this inequality.

These deeper issues of fairness in the music industry could be addressed in future coalition reports. They currently limit their scope to whether promises have been kept.

“Racism is a 400 year old problem,” said the Prophet. “We didn’t think it would be resolved in 12 months.”

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Politics

10 Weeks to the End Line: New York’s Mayoral Race Heats Up

10 Weeks to the Finish Line: New York’s Mayoral Race Heats Up

Raymond J. McGuire, a former former Citigroup black executive who campaigned heavily for voting Southeast Queens, traveled to Minneapolis last week with Rev. Al Sharpton, the civil rights activist, to attend the trial of George Floyd’s death to participate.

And on Friday, Ms. Wiley – a black woman already supported by the powerful local 1199 Service Employees International Union – was endorsed by Representative Yvette Clarke, a Brooklyn Democrat and member of the Congressional Black Caucus. Dianne Morales, the most progressive candidate in the race, identifies as an Afro-Latina and has aroused great interest among grassroots left activists.

Mr. Stringer, with his significant war chest and list of prominent endorsements, competes with Ms. Wiley and Ms. Morales for the most progressive voters in town. Left activists, alarmed by the perceived strength of Mr. Yang and Mr. Adams – two other centrist candidates – are planning a strategy to better align a candidate or group of candidates with their vision.

A number of organizations, from the left Working Families Party to the United Federation of Teachers, are in the midst of support processes that could help voters narrow down their preferred candidates. Decisions can be made this week.

There is still time for the race to evolve. Ms. Garcia is deeply respected by some of the people who know City Hall best. Mr. McGuire and Shaun Donovan, a former federal housing secretary, have aired television commercials and Super-PACs are backing them, a dynamic that could improve their competitiveness, though neither is caught on fire.

Mr McGuire, in particular, was seen as a business favorite early on – with the fundraiser to prove it – but there is growing evidence that other candidates might also be acceptable to the city’s donor class.

Mr. Yang courted Mr. McGuire’s donors and encouraged them to take a portfolio management approach by investing in multiple candidates who support the business community, such as someone with direct knowledge of the conversations who spoke on condition of anonymity and private Describe discussions. The Yang campaign declined to comment.