NEW YORK — New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced Sunday that he is ending his campaign for reelection.
In a video released on social media, Adams spoke with pride about his achievements as mayor, including a drop in violent crime. But he said that “constant media speculation” about his future and a decision by the city’s campaign finance board to withhold public funding from his reelection effort made it impossible to stay in the race.
“Despite all we’ve achieved, I cannot continue my reelection campaign,” Adams said.
The one-term Democrat’s decision to quit the race comes days after he repeatedly insisted he would stay in the contest, saying everyday New Yorkers don’t “surrender.”
But speculation that he wouldn’t make it to election day has been rampant for a year. Adams’ campaign was severely wounded by his federal bribery case — since dismissed by the Justice Department after he agreed to cooperate with President Trump’s immigration crackdown — and liberal anger over his warm relationship with Trump. He skipped the Democratic primary and got on the ballot as an independent.
In the video, Adams did not directly mention or endorse any of the remaining candidates in the race. He also warned that “extremism is growing in our politics.”
“Major change is welcome and necessary, but beware of those who claim the answer [is] to destroy the very system we built over generations,” he said. “That is not change, that is chaos. Instead, I urge leaders to choose leaders not by what they promise, but by what they have delivered.”
Adams’ exit could potentially provide a lift to the campaign of former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a fellow Democratic centrist running as an independent, who has portrayed himself as the only candidate able to beat the Democratic Party’s nominee, state Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani.
It was unclear, though, whether enough Adams supporters would shift their allegiance to Cuomo to make a difference.
Mamdani, who, at age 33, would be the city’s youngest and most liberal mayor in generations if elected, beat Cuomo decisively in the Democratic primary by campaigning on a promise to try to lower the cost of living in one of the world’s most expensive cities.
Republican Curtis Sliwa also remains in the race, though his candidacy has been undercut from within his own party. Trump in a recent interview called him “not exactly prime time.”
Democratic New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, who has endorsed Mamdani, said in a statement after the mayor’s announcement that she has been proud to have worked with Adams for the last four years, and that he leaves the city “better than he inherited it.”
Offenhartz and Izaguirre write for the Associated Press.
The race for Los Angeles County sheriff is already heating up — even with the primary not scheduled until next June. Six candidates have officially entered the field to unseat Robert Luna, with the early challengers slinging barbs, probing the incumbent’s political weaknesses and setting the stage for a heated campaign in the coming months.
Most vocal and well-known among the contenders is former Sheriff Alex Villanueva, who lost to Luna in 2022 and is now vying for a rematch. He is among a field of current and former lawmen who have criticized Luna’s time in office as ineffective, uninspiring and opaque.
Luna told The Times he deserves to keep his job through 2030, arguing voters should choose stability as Southern California prepares to host major events in the coming years.
“The last thing we need is more inconsistency in leadership as we start working toward the World Cup and the Olympics,” Luna said.
Villanueva registered a campaign committee in July and has since leveraged his ability to draw attention like few others in L.A. politics.
But the political dynamics have changed since 2022, when Joe Biden was president and Villanueva was still in charge of California’s largest law enforcement agency. Now, President Trump has ratcheted up political pressure on L.A., and last year, Janice Hahn defeated Villanueva in the primary for her county supervisor seat by a nearly 30-point margin.
Through it all, Sara Sadhwani, an assistant professor of politics at Pomona College, said it seems as though “Luna is generally liked, perhaps because he has brought a steady hand to the department” after what she termed “upheaval” under Villanueva.
The former sheriff has been heavily criticized for his combative personal style, pursuit of political vendettas and his handling of investigations into so-called deputy gangs deputies and other alleged misconduct.
“Does Villanueva have a lane to come back? I don’t think so,” said Sadhwani.
Luna launched jabs at his opponents, with the sharpest reserved for his predecessor.
“Not one of those individuals that is running comes close to the experience that I have and the accomplishments that I’ve had so far,” Luna said. “There were a lot of controversies and scandals with the previous sheriff that, again, eroded public trust.”
And yet, there’s no conversation about the sheriff’s race that won’t mention Villanueva, whose name recognition runs deep across L.A. County.
Villanueva told The Times he’s “eager to get back in the saddle,” especially now, when “there are prosecutors ready to prosecute,” a nod to the tough-on-crime stances of Acting U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli and L.A. County Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman.
Former Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva talks with reporters at an election night gathering in Boyle Heights on June 7, 2022, when he was defeated by Robert Luna.
(Luis Sinco/Los Angeles Times)
Villanueva had strong words for his 2022 opponent.
“The status quo is failing miserably the people of L.A. County,” he said. “I just can’t believe what Luna’s done to the organization I’ve spent my entire adult life in.”
Others jockeying for contention are pitching themselves as offering a breath of fresh air.
Lt. Eric Strong, who has served over 30 years in law enforcement and was seen as the most progressive of the 2022 candidates, is throwing his hat back in the ring after coming in third in that year.
“What really got me interested in running is seeing the continued failed leadership within the department,” Strong said in a recent interview. “Nothing’s changed. … Honestly Luna’s just a quieter version of Alex Villanueva.”
Then there’s Oscar Martinez, a proud immigrant and U.S. Marine Corps. veteran who made a career at the sheriff’s department after multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Andre White, 34, is the youngest candidate. A Compton-raised detective with 11 years at the department, he promises to take a “community-oriented approach” if he’s elected sheriff.
Brendan Corbett served as the assistant sheriff for custody operations under Villanueva.
Lastly, there’s Capt. Mike Bornman, who has decades of experience in the department and lists a “comprehensive forensic audit” of its books as the top priority on his campaign website.
In a recent phone interview, Bornman said he considered Luna a “vulnerable” incumbent.
The sheriff has faced criticism from opponents and advocates who say he has done too little to improve jail conditions, leading to a surge in inmate deaths this year. Like Villanueva, he has also faced pressure to do more to root out deputy gangs and boost recruitment.
“The morale is as bad as I’ve ever seen it,” Bornman said. “Something has to change,” he added. “I don’t think the department can take another four more years with the guy.”
Political analysts cautioned that the race is sill wide open, with one expert declining to speculate during the “embryonic” stages as the field takes shape.
Anything can happen in the eight months remaining before the primary, but Sadhwani said one thing is clear: Unseating the current sheriff won’t be easy.
“I will say in general that an incumbent such as Luna typically has the upper hand and challengers need not only cause but the campaign fundraising ability to get their message out — no small feat in a county as large as L.A.”
So far, fundraising has been mostly anemic, at least according to the county’s most recent comprehensive campaign finance data available for the sheriff’s race, which covers only Jan. 1 through June 30.
Over those six months, Luna raised about $393,000; Bornman brought in nearly $23,000 of contributions; Martinez brought in about $6,700; and White raised less than $3,000. The other three candidates had not even declared their candidacies by June 30.
Conservative politician Bill Berrien has been exposed for following NSFW accounts – including a non-binary adult film star – despite his “family values” political stance.
Back in July, the Pindel Global Precision CEO entered the 2026 race for Wisconsin governor.
However, the 56-year-old’s right-wing “values” were recently called into question when theMilwaukee Journal Sentinelshared a surprising report regarding his online activity.
According to the news outlet, Berrien followed numerous sexually explicit accounts on the publishing platform Medium, including Polyamorary Today and Sexography.
His following list also included sex positive writers Octavio Morrison and Emma Austin, as well as non-binary author and adult film star Jiz Lee.
In a statement to the aforementioned publication, a spokeswoman from Berrien’s campaign brushed off the revelation, stating: “It is absurd to suggest that Bill would know about a particular author’s personal choices or by reading one article by an author would agree with everything else they wrote.
“It is also absurd to suggest that reading articles about sex as a happily married adult man with three children is in any way out of line with conservative Catholic values.”
According to the news outlet, 23 profiles – including the majority of the NSFW ones mentioned above – were removed from Berrien’s Medium following list, following their inquiry into his online activity.
“When you brought this up, he logged in on Tuesday and started messing around, which resulted in some folks being deleted,” another spokeswoman from the campaign told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
In addition to his representatives, Berrien shared a statement to The Associated Press downplaying the news.
“There are a lot of important issues that are affecting our state and nation,” he said. “But what is the mainstream media focused on right now? Some stupid articles I read years ago, not the plans I have to reindustrialise our state, turn the economy around, and bring prosperity for all through work.”
Berrien also targeted “mainstream media” in a post on X/Twitter, describing the coverage as “garbage political hits” and exclaiming that it won’t keep him out of “this fight.”
On 23 September, Lee shared their reaction to the news, slamming Berrien for his hypocritical behaviour.
“It’s okay to follow trans porn stars. It’s okay to read articles about sex and relationships,” they wrote.
“What’s not okay is the hypocrisy of backing forceful legislation that restricts what people, trans and otherwise, can do with their own bodies. That is shameful.”
It’s okay to follow trans porn stars. It’s okay to read articles about sex and relationships. What’s not okay is the hypocrisy of backing forceful legislation that restricts what people, trans and otherwise, can do with their own bodies. That is shameful.
ATLANTA — Georgia’s Brad Raffensperger, the Republican secretary of state who rejected Donald Trump’s call to help overturn the state’s 2020 election results, said Wednesday that he’s running for governor in 2026.
The wealthy engineering entrepreneur might appeal most to business-oriented Republicans who once dominated GOP primaries in Georgia, but he is pledging a strongly conservative campaign even while he remains scorned by Trump and his allies. Raffensperger’s entry into the field intensifies the primary in a state with an unbroken line of Republican governors since 2002.
“I’m a conservative Republican, and I’m prepared to make the tough decisions. I follow the law and the Constitution, and I’ll always do the right thing for Georgia no matter what,” Raffensperger said in an announcement video.
Raffensperger defied Trump’s wrath to win reelection in 2022, but he will again test GOP primary voters’ tolerance for a candidate so clearly targeted by the president. His first challenge may be to even qualify for the primary. Georgia’s Republican Party voted in June to ban Raffensperger from running under its banner, although the party chairman said that attempt might not go anywhere.
Two other top Republicans are already in the race — Lt. Gov. Burt Jones and Atty. Gen. Chris Carr. Jones swore himself to be a “duly elected and qualified” elector for Trump in 2020 even though Democrat Joe Biden had been declared the state’s winner. Carr sided with Raffensperger in rejecting challenges to the results. Other Republicans include Clark Dean, Scott Ellison and Gregg Kirkpatrick.
On the Democratic side, top candidates include former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, state Sen. Jason Esteves and former state Labor Commissioner Michael Thurmond. Geoff Duncan, who like Raffensperger spurned Trump’s push to overturn the 2020 election as Republican lieutenant governor, entered the governor’s race Tuesday as a Democrat.
In the national spotlight
Raffensperger spent most of his first two years in office battling lawsuits filed by Democrats that fruitlessly alleged Georgia, under then-Secretary of State Brian Kemp, engaged in illegal voter suppression in 2018 in Kemp’s victory over Democrat Stacey Abrams. Raffensperger also was tasked to roll out new Dominion voting machines for a 2020 election thrown off-kilter by the coronavirus pandemic.
Biden’s narrow win in Georgia changed things. Raffensperger said publicly that he wished Trump had won, but firmly held that he saw no evidence of widespread fraud or voting irregularities. Trump and his partisans ratcheted up attacks.
In his 2021 book, “Integrity Counts,” Raffensperger recounted death threats texted to his wife, an encounter with men whom he suspected of staking out his home, and being escorted out of the Georgia Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as a handful of protesters entered the building on the day many more protesters stormed the U.S. Capitol.
But it was a phone call days earlier, on Jan. 2, that wrote Raffensperger’s name into history. Trump pressured the secretary of state to “find 11,780 votes” — enough to overturn Biden’s win in the state, repeatedly citing disproven claims of fraud and raising the prospect of “criminal offense” if officials didn’t change the vote count, according to a recording of the conversation.
Raffensperger pushed back, noting that lawsuits making those claims had been fruitless.
“We don’t agree that you have won,” Raffensperger told Trump.
Robert Redford looked like he walked out of the sea to become a Hollywood god. He was physically flawless. Pacific blue eyes, salt-bleached hair, a friendly surfer-boy squint. Born in Santa Monica to a milkman and a housewife, his first memory was of sliding off his mother’s lap at the Aero Theatre as a toddler and running toward the light, causing such a ruckus that the projectionist had to stop the film.
He definitely grew up to grab the movies’ attention. He wasn’t just telegenic but talented, although that wasn’t a requirement for stardom when he emerged in the late ’50s when the industry was scooping up hunks like him by the bucket for television and B-movies. All a male ingenue needed to do was smile and kiss the girl. It would have been so easy to do that a couple times and wind up doing it forever. You can understand why so many forgotten actors made that deal, without realizing that forever can lead to a fast retirement.
But if Redford had sensed at 2 years old that he was meant to be onscreen, by his 20s, he insisted he’d only do it on his own terms. At 27, with nearly zero name recognition, he horrified his then-agent by turning down a $10,000-a-week TV gig as a strait-laced psychiatrist to do a Mike Nichols theater production for just $110. His rejection of the easy money was an unusual choice, particularly for a cash-strapped father of two.
To appreciate Redford fully, we have to applaud not only the work he did but the simple, feel-good roles he rejected. He could have become a celebrity without breaking a sweat as the war hero, the jock, the husband, the cowboy, the American ideal made incarnate. Yet, he had the rare ability to sidestep what audiences thought we wanted from him to instead give us something we didn’t know we needed: selfish victors (“Downhill Racer”), self-destructive veterans (“The Great Waldo Pepper”) and tragic men who did everything right and still failed (2013’s “All Is Lost”).
In spirit, Redford never strayed far from the teen rebel he’d been — a truant who’d skipped school, stole booze and crashed race cars — and the radical artist he hurled himself into becoming by quitting everything traditional (the football team, his fraternity, college altogether) to move to Paris where he took up oil painting and marched against the Soviets. He might have excelled at the sleazy roles that made Dustin Hoffman and Al Pacino famous. On the outside, he knew they didn’t fit, either.
Sometimes Redford said no even when I wish he’d have said yes. Imagine if he’d agreed to face off against Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” Instead, he told Nichols he’d rather tangle with Anne Bancroft in “The Graduate,” only to be rejected as too handsome for the role. “Can you honestly imagine a guy like you having difficulty seducing a woman?” Nichols told him.
Instead, Redford used his all-American good looks to make us question our flattering image of ourselves. In the 1974 adaptation of “The Great Gatsby,” he was the first person you’d think of to play the title role because he fully understood the point of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s book — how it felt to represent our country’s whole image of success while knowing it’s a phony put-on. I imagine him making a devil’s bargain with his face, vowing that he won’t hide behind goofy accents and stunt wigs the way other too-handsome oddballs do, if he’s allowed to use his appeal like a Trojan horse.
If there’s one thing that unites his roles, from 1966’s “The Chase” to “Lions for Lambs,” it’s his willingness to give the screen his full charisma — to let audiences stare at him for the whole running time of a movie — as long as we’ll agree to ask what’s lurking in his underbelly. Most often, we’ll find frustrated idealism just at the moment it starts to sour.
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The films of the 1960s and ’70s that made Redford an icon mostly cleave into two categories: scamps and truth-seekers. (The latter can overlap with suckers and stooges.) His antihero crooks in “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” and “The Sting” captured something in our national id, our not-so-secret belief that it’s OK to break a few rules to get ahead — that we can forgive a sin if we like the sinner. I like how those movies give you a guilty little tingle about rooting for Redford even when it means scratching off a couple of the Ten Commandments. (Thou shalt not steal unless you’re Robert Redford, who got away with it all the way through 2018’s “The Old Man and the Gun.”)
Lately, the Redford roles I’ve been thinking about are the ones where his all-American appeal makes us examine all of America, good and bad. The two that instantly jump to mind are his pair of political thrillers: “Three Days of the Condor,” in which he plays a CIA agent on the run from his own co-workers, and “All the President’s Men,” in which he doggedly uncovers the Watergate scandal. Both films believe in the power of getting the truth out to the press; neither is so naive as to think the truth alone will save the day.
But let’s not overlook “The Candidate,” a movie that has Redford as underqualified political scion Bill McKay, pressed to run for governor of California. “He’s not going to get his ass kicked — he’s cute,” his father (Melvyn Douglas) says. Meanwhile, his own campaign team cares more about the length of his sideburns than ideas in his head. Released in 1972, five years into former actor Ronald Reagan’s own governorship, the movie hammers home that superficiality might be democracy’s downfall — and the stakes are bigger than who is Hollywood‘s latest heartthrob.
Vice President Dan Quayle once said “The Candidate” inspired him, triggering its screenwriter Jeremy Larner to dash this off in an op-ed: “Mr. Quayle, this was not a how-to movie, it was a watch-out movie. And you are what we should be watching out for!”
In his later years, Redford became a filmmaker himself and I can picture him pulling Brad Pitt aside on the set of “A River Runs Through It” to whisper: You don’t have to stay in that pretty–boy box. Feel free to get weird. As an actor and director, Redford continued to create characters who uncovered our our hidden rot, whether in our purported national pastime, baseball (“The Natural”), or in our actual one, watching television (“Quiz Show”). His turn in “Indecent Proposal” as the wealthy man who offers to rent his employee’s wife lives on as shorthand for tycoons who assume they can buy whatever, and whoever, they want. When he eventually signed on for a superhero film, it was, fittingly, alongside Captain America, that upright paragon of virtue — and Redford played the villain.
What Quayle missed about “The Candidate” is that when it comes to a Robert Redford movie, truth is never as plain as what your eyes can see. There’s always a deeper level and there’s no guarantee that justice would win. In fact, I’d argue in Redford’s films, it rarely does.
NEW YORK — President Trump on Friday dismissed Curtis Sliwa — his own party’s New York City mayoral candidate — as “not exactly prime time” and even disparaged his affinity for cats, as pressure mounts for Democratic candidate Zohran Mamdani ‘s rivals to drop out of the race.
Trump has warned that Mamdani, a 33-year-old state lawmaker and democratic socialist, will likely cruise to victory over Sliwa, Mayor Eric Adams and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Nov. 4 unless two of those candidates dropped out. The New York-born Republican thinks Cuomo could have a chance in a one-on-one race.
On a Friday appearance on “Fox & Friends”, he threw cold water on Sliwa’s mayoral hopes, even taking a shot at the red beret-wearing candidate’s vow to fill the official residence of the New York City mayor with rescue cats if he does win.
“I’m a Republican, but Curtis is not exactly prime time,” Trump said bluntly.
“He wants cats to be in Gracie Mansion,” the president added. “We don’t need thousands of cats.”
Mamdani became the presumed favorite in the race after winning the Democratic primary over Cuomo, who is now running as an independent in the general election. Adams, a Democrat, skipped the primary due to his campaign being sidelined by a now-dismissed federal bribery case.
Two polls conducted in early September, one by the New York Times and Siena University, the other by Quinnipiac University, each showed likely voters favoring Mamdani over Cuomo, with Adams and Sliwa behind Cuomo.
The Quinnipiac poll suggested the gap between Mamdani and Cuomo could narrow if Adams dropped out. The Times/Siena poll suggested that if both Adams and Sliwa withdrew, Mamdani’s advantage over Cuomo could shrink even further.
A campaign spokesperson on Friday stressed that Adams has no intention of stepping down from office or abandoning his reelection bid — though confirmed he is commissioning a poll to gauge his support.
“He just wants to look at all factors,” said Todd Shapiro said. “There’s nothing on the table right now. He’s looking at polls just like he’s doing everything else.”
The mayor, he added, would have more to say on the polling itself next week.
“He’s still very popular,” Shapiro said. “He’s running on a record of success.”
Adams in recent weeks has sought to rebuff questions of whether he might accept an alternate job offer amid reports that he had been approached about potentially taking a role with the federal government.
In a radio interview Friday, Sliwa — the founder of New York’s Guardian Angels anti-crime patrol group — said Trump seems to be responding “to what people are telling him about me without really knowing much about me of late.”
“I would hope the president would revisit my history, not only with him but in this city,” Sliwa said on 710 WOR.
The outspoken New Yorkers both rose to prominence in the late 1970s, but Sliwa has said they haven’t spoken in years, possibly because he’d been critical of Trump at times, both on his long-running radio show and as a candidate.
In a follow up email, Sliwa also defended his love of cats, adding that “animal welfare” is among the issues “New Yorkers care about” that he hopes to focus on, if elected.
“New Yorkers care for people and for animals, and so do I,” he said. “I am proud of my wife, Nancy, who has devoted her life to fostering, caring for, and saving animals, and fighting for them when no one else would.”
Sliwa has sheltered a large collection of rescue cats in his Manhattan apartment and has noted that Gracie Mansion is far more spacious.
“We’ll be able to house unwanted cats and dogs right in the lawn, the great lawn they have,” he said recently on his radio show.
FAIRVIEW, N.C. — Jamie Ager has spent much of the past year rebuilding his farm in the foothills of western North Carolina after Hurricane Helene tore through the region, cutting power, destroying fences and scattering livestock.
Then, earlier this year, Ager lost his beef contract with local schools, a casualty of billions of dollars in cuts to the U.S. Department of Agriculture under the Trump administration.
Now, the fifth-generation farmer is running for Congress — part of a new crop of Democratic candidates the party is turning to as it tries to compete in the tough, often rural districts it may need to flip to retake the U.S. House in 2026.
Democrats say these new recruits are uniquely suited to break through in districts where President Trump’s popularity dominates. Many, like Ager, are already a well-known presence in their communities. And in parts of North Carolina, Kentucky, Michigan and elsewhere, the party is betting local credibility can cut through skepticism where the Democratic brand has fallen.
Ager says he sees national Democrats as out of touch with rural life: too “academic” and “politically correct and scripted.”
“That’s just not what people are interested in,” he says. “The ideas of helping poor people, being neighborly, the ideal of doing those things, I think, are worthy, good ideas that are actually popular. But the execution of a lot of those ideas has been gummed up, you know, not well executed.”
A shifting House map
Heading into next year’s midterms, Democrats believe momentum is on their side. Historically, the president’s party loses ground in the midterms. In 2018, during Trump’s first term, Democrats flipped 41 seats to take control of the House. Republicans currently control the House by such a slim margin, Democrats need to pick up only a few seats to break the GOP’s hold on Washington.
The Republican-led tax break and spending cut bill has added to Democrats’ optimism. About two-thirds of U.S. adults expect the new law will help the rich, according to a poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. About half say it’ll do more harm than good for middle-class people and people like them.
Still, Republicans remain confident. They point to having fewer vulnerable seats than Democrats have this cycle. Only three Republicans hold House districts Democrat Kamala Harris won last year, while 13 Democrats represent districts Trump won.
They also note Democrats’ low opinion of their own party after last year’s losses. In a July AP-NORC poll, Democrats were likelier to describe their own party negatively than Republicans, with many Democrats calling it weak or ineffective.
In places where local dynamics may give Democrats a shot, it means finding the right candidates is especially important, party leaders say.
“Recruitment matters in these years when the environment is going to be competitive,” Democratic pollster John Anzalone said.
Democrats hope a farmer in western North Carolina can regain trust
With power, water and telecommunications down due to last year’s hurricane, Ager’s Hickory Nut Gap farm became a hub for the community — hosting cookouts and using propane to grill food for neighbors.
Statewide, the storm caused nearly $60 billion in damage and killed more than 100 people. Little federal aid has reached the hardest-hit parts of western North Carolina.
“Helene hitting definitely put an exclamation point on, like, ‘Whoa, we need help and support,’” Ager said.
Democrats see Ager as a high-risk, high-reward candidate who could be successful in a district where Democrats have struggled.
No Democrat has won North Carolina’s 11th Congressional District since it was redrawn by the Republican-controlled legislature in 2011. A court-ordered redistricting ahead of the 2020 election made it slightly more favorable to Democrats, encompassing Asheville and much of western North Carolina. Republican Rep. Chuck Edwards still won by nearly 14 percentage points last year and is expected to seek reelection.
Grayson Barnette, a Democratic strategist who helped recruit Ager, said in some districts it’s a risk to run a candidate who hasn’t held elected office before.
“But I would argue that’s a good thing, especially when the Democrats just took the big hit we did,” Barnette said. “We have to look in the mirror and say, ‘Let’s try something new.’”
In a district where nearly 62% of residents live in very low-density areas, Barnette believes Ager’s identity — as a business owner, coach and father with deep local roots — could cut through. His unpolished, direct style, he says, may resonate more than a polished political résumé.
In the video launching his campaign, Ager shows flooding on the farm and is seen on the porch of his home, feeding chickens, driving a tractor and spending time with his wife and three sons.
“I’m not flashy, but I’m honest,” he says in the video.
Ager doesn’t call himself a Democrat in the roughly two-minute video and rarely used the word during a three-hour interview. Still, his ties to the party run deep: His brother serves in the state House, following in the footsteps of their father. His grandfather served six years in the U.S. House.
Asked whether that might be a liability in the district, Ager shrugged: “Then don’t vote for me.”
Trump’s big bill could reshape a conservative district in Michigan
In western Michigan, state Sen. Sean McCann is a different kind of candidate from Ager. He’s buttoned-up and soft-spoken, with a long resume in elected office and deep roots in Kalamazoo, having served for a decade on the city commission before winning a seat in the state House in 2010.
In a district anchored by conservative and religious values, Democrats see McCann as the kind of steady, experienced figure who can make inroads — especially as backlash builds to Trump’s tax bill, which includes deep spending cuts.
At a recent meeting at Kalamazoo’s Family Health Center, where nearly 65% of patients rely on Medicaid, the center’s president warned the proposed Medicaid cuts would be devastating.
“It’s about being home in the community and listening to our community’s values — and carrying those to Washington,” McCann said.
The district is represented by Republican Rep. Bill Huizenga, who won reelection by nearly 12 percentage points in 2022. But Huizenga hasn’t said whether he’ll seek another term, and Trump carried the district by only 5.5 percentage points in 2024.
Democrats hope strong ties help elsewhere
Across the country, Democrats are watching similar races in places like Iowa and Kentucky, where local candidates with strong community ties are running. In Iowa’s 2nd District, state Rep. Lindsay James — a fourth-term lawmaker and Presbyterian pastor — is weighing a run in the northeast part of the state. In Kentucky’s 6th, which includes Lexington and Richmond, former federal prosecutor Zach Dembo is running his first campaign, describing himself as a political outsider.
It’s a mix of profiles: Ager, the farmer-turned-candidate feeding neighbors after a hurricane. McCann, the public servant meeting with health workers in his hometown. And others like them trying to reconnect a skeptical electorate.
“Yes, the Democratic Party has some taint to it,” Ager said. “But when I go talk to Republicans who are friends that I’ve known forever, there’s genuine admiration and mutual respect for each other. And that comes from being in this community forever.”
Cappelletti writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Maya Sweedler in Washington contributed to this report.
LA PAZ, Bolivia — The campaign billboards adorning the streets of Bolivia for Sunday’s presidential election make grand promises: A solution to the dire economic crisis within 100 days, an end to fuel shortages and bread lines, unity for a divided nation. One vice presidential candidate pledges to “Make Bolivia Sexy Again.”
In their efforts to draw votes, all eight candidates — two right-wing front-runners, a conservative centrist and splintered factions of Bolivia’s long-dominant left-wing — are vowing drastic change, launching searing attacks on the status quo and selling a message of hope.
But for many Bolivians, hope has already hardened into cynicism.
Slogans fail to break through
Promises of quick fixes — like right-wing candidate Samuel Doria Medina’s pledge to stabilize the upside-down economy within “100 days, dammit!” — fall flat. Vandals add extra zeroes to his campaign posters, suggesting a million days might be a more realistic goal.
Tuto, the nickname of Jorge Quiroga, the other right-wing favorite, turns up on city walls with its first letter swapped to form a Spanish insult.
Some signs for left-wing candidate Andrónico Rodríguez, pledging “unity above all” have been defaced to read “unity in the face of lines.”
And few know what to do with the acronym of the governing party candidate, Eduardo del Castillo: “We Are a National Option with Authentic Ideas.” (No, it’s not any catchier in Spanish).
Yet for all their disenchantment with politicians, Bolivians are counting down the days until elections, united in their relief that, no matter what happens, leftist President Luis Arce will leave office after five difficult years.
Inflation is soaring. The central bank has burned through its dollar reserves. Imported goods have vanished from shelves.
“I have no faith in any candidate. There’s no one new in this race,” Alex Poma Quispe, 25, told the Associated Press from his family’s fruit truck, where he slept curled into a ball in the front seat Wednesday for a second straight night, stranded with 50 other trucks in a fuel line en route from farms in the Yungas region to markets in Bolivia’s capital of La Paz.
“The only thing we’re enthusiastic about is Arce leaving.”
New campaigns, old faces
A bitter power struggle between Arce and former President Evo Morales has shattered their hegemonic Movement Toward Socialism, or MAS, party, giving the right-wing opposition its best shot at victory in two decades.
“I’ve seen that socialism has brought nothing good to this country,” said Victor Ticona, 24, a music student, as he left Quiroga’s campaign rally Wednesday. “We have to become more competitive in the world.”
Doria Medina, a 66-year-old multimillionaire businessman, and Quiroga, a 65-year-old former vice president who briefly assumed the presidency in 2001 after then-President Hugo Banzer resigned with cancer, are familiar faces in Bolivian politics. Both have run for president three times before.
While their calls for economic freedom and foreign investment appeal to voters desperate for change, they have struggled to stir up excitement. Nearly 30% of voters are undecided, according to polls.
Doria Medina, a former minister of planning, acknowledged in a recent social media video that “people say I have no charisma, that I’m too serious.”
Quiroga’s association with Banzer, a former military dictator who brutally quashed dissent over seven corruption-plagued years before being democratically elected, has turned some voters off.
“It was a bloody era,” recalled 52-year-old taxi driver Juan Carlos Mamani. “For me, Tuto is the definition of the old guard.”
At the pumps, not the polls
Poma Quispe and his 24-year-old brother Weimar have no idea who’d they vote for — or if they’ll vote at all.
Voting is compulsory in Bolivia, and about 7.9 million people in the country of 12 million are eligible to cast ballots in Sunday’s election. Non-voters face various financial penalties.
Over the last year, fuel shortages have brought much of Bolivia to a standstill. Truckers waste days at a time queuing at empty gas stations around Bolivia, just to keep their vehicles moving.
The diesel arrives on no set schedule, and the rhythm of life is forced to adapt. If the diesel arrives before Sunday, the Poma Quispe brothers will vote.
If not, “there’s no way we’re giving up our spot in line for those candidates,” Weimar Poma Quispe said.
Personal drama over political debate
This year’s election coincides with the 200th anniversary of Bolivia’s independence.
But instead of celebrating, many Bolivians are questioning the validity of their democracy and state-directed economic model. Crowds booed at President Arce during his bicentennial speech earlier this month. His government invited left-wing presidents from across Latin America to attend the event; only the president of Honduras showed.
The lack of enthusiasm among ordinary Bolivians and beleaguered officials seems matched by that of the candidates.
Authorities allowed televised presidential debates — banned under Morales — for the first time in 20 years. The front-runners turned up to just one of them.
Personal attacks overshadowed policy discussions. Doria Medina accused Del Castillo of ties to drug traffickers, while Del Castillo mocked the businessman’s record of failed presidential bids. Rodríguez and Quiroga traded barbs over alleged involvement in extrajudicial killings.
Chasing the youth vote
The median age in Bolivia is 26. For comparison, it is 39 in China and the United States.
Having grown up under the government of Morales and his MAS party, many young Bolivians are restive, disillusioned by current prospects as they become more digitally connected than any generation before them.
Quiroga in particular has energized young voters with his running mate, JP Velasco, a successful 38-year-old tech entrepreneur with no political experience who vows to reverse a brain drain in Bolivia and create opportunities for youth in exploiting the country’s abundant reserves of lithium, the critical metal for electric vehicle batteries, and developing data centers.
Young crowds packed Quiroga’s Wednesday night campaign rally, even as 20-somethings in goth makeup and tight-stretch dresses expressed more interest in the lively cumbia bands than the political speeches.
Others sported red MAGA-style caps with Velasco’s slogan, “Make Bolivia Sexy Again.” Cap-wearers offered varying answers on when Bolivia was last “sexy,” with some saying never, but agreed it meant attractive to foreign investors.
“It won’t just be tech companies coming here, McDonald’s might even come,” Velasco told the crowd, eliciting whoops and howls. “Young people, if you go abroad, let it be for vacation.”
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A failed political candidate was sentenced to 80 years in federal prison Wednesday for his convictions in a series of drive-by shootings at the homes of state and local lawmakers in the aftermath of the 2020 election.
A jury convicted former Republican candidate Solomon Peña earlier this year of conspiracy, weapons and other charges in the shootings in December 2022 and January 2023 on the homes of four Democratic officials in Albuquerque, including the current state House speaker.
Prosecutors, who had sought a 90-year sentence, said Peña has shown no remorse and had hoped to cause political change by terrorizing people who held contrary views to him into being too afraid to take part in political life.
Peña’s lawyers had sought a 60-year sentence, saying their client maintains that he is innocent of the charges. They have said Peña was not involved in the shootings and that prosecutors were relying on the testimony of two men who bear responsibility and accepted plea agreements in exchange for leniency.
“Today was a necessary step toward Mr. Peña’s continued fight to prove his innocence,” said Nicholas Hart, one of Peña’s attorneys. “He looks forward to the opportunity to appeal, where serious issues about the propriety of this prosecution will be addressed.”
The attacks took place as threats and acts of intimidation against election workers and public officials surged across the country after President Donald Trump and his allies called into question the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.
Prosecutors said Peña resorted to violence in the belief that a “rigged” election had robbed him of victory in his bid to serve in the state Legislature.
The shootings targeted the homes of officials including two county commissioners after their certification of the 2022 election, in which Peña lost by nearly 50 percentage points. No one was injured, but in one case bullets passed through the bedroom of a state senator’s 10-year-old daughter.
Two other men who had acknowledged helping Peña with the attacks had previously pleaded guilty to federal charges and received yearslong prison sentences.
Aug. 14 (UPI) — A failed GOP candidate in New Mexico has been sentenced to 80 years behind bars for orchestrating a shooting spree targeting his perceived political adversaries following his defeat in the 2022 midterm elections, which he believed was rigged against him.
Solomon Pena, 42, was sentenced Wednesday, to 960 months in prison, a fine of $250,000 and three years of supervised release, the Justice Department said in a statement.
“Violence and intimidation have no place in our elections,” U.S. Attorney Ryan Ellison said. “This sentence shows that through the tireless work of our agents and prosecutors, we will protect our democracy and bring offenders to justice.”
A federal jury convicted Pena in March of one count of conspiracy, four counts of intimidation and interference with federally protected activities and several firearms charges, as well as three counts of solicitation to commit a crime of violence.
Pena ran as a Republican for the District 14 seat in the New Mexico House of Representatives in the 2022 midterm elections, and was handily defeated by Democrat Miguel Garcia, who secured 74% of the vote.
“I never conceded my HD 14 race,” he said in a statement published to what was then called Twitter, now X, following the election, with a picture of himself wearing a red “Make America Great Again” sweatshirt and flags supporting Donald Trump‘s 2024 re-election campaign.
“Now researching my options,” he said.
Following the election, the failed political candidate cried foul and was accused of pressuring members of the Bernalillo County Board of Commissioners not to certify the results.
Authorities said he had visited several of their homes to lodge complaints over voter fraud and election rigging. When they did not acquiesce to his demands, Pena turned violent.
Shortly after he visited the commissioners, several of their homes were shot at between Dec. 4, 2022, and Jan. 3, 2023 — specifically, the home of Bernalillo County Commissioner Adriann Barboa on Dec. 4, New Mexico House Speaker Javier Martinez on Dec. 8, former Bernalillo County Commissioner Debbie O’Malley on Dec. 11 and State Sen. Linda Lopez on Jan. 3.
Pena was arrested mid-January 2023 amid a hunt for a suspect. Inside his vehicle, authorities found two guns, 800 fentanyl pills and cash.
Federal prosecutors said the shootings were the product of a conspiracy involving four men Pena paid to shoot up their houses. The prosecutors also said that while in jail, he tried to solicit inmates to murder witnesses to prevent their testimony during his trial.
Two co-conspirators — Jose Trujillo and Demetrio Trujillo — previously pleaded guilty to their involvement in the crime, with the former being sentenced to 37 months in prison and the latter, 180 months.
CHICAGO — Illinois Republican Jack Ryan gave up his Senate bid Friday, pressured by GOP outrage over sex club allegations in his divorce records.
In the documents released Monday, his ex-wife, actress Jeri Ryan, stated that he had taken her to clubs in Paris, New York and New Orleans, where he tried to force her to engage in sex acts in front of strangers.
Ryan, who repeatedly has denied the allegations, said in a statement Friday that it would be nearly impossible to continue his campaign.
“It’s clear to me that a vigorous debate on the issues most likely could not take place if I remain in the race,” said Ryan, 44. “What would take place, rather, is a brutal, scorched-earth campaign — the kind of campaign that has turned off so many voters, the kind of politics I refuse to play.”
The state Republican Party has suffered a series of setbacks in recent years, including losing the governorship and many other statewide offices in the 2002 elections.
After the details of the divorce records were released, Illinois Republican leaders were among the first to call for Ryan to bow out.
“You’ve got to wonder why people don’t have the good sense to say to themselves: ‘Well, I’ve got this skeleton in my closet, so I can’t really run for public office,’ ” said Bruce Cain, director of the Institute of Governmental Studies at UC Berkeley.
“A lot of people are extremely naive of the level of scrutiny they will go under when they run for office, particularly people in the private sector,” Cain said. “They assume that the stuff they get away with their private life, they can get away with in public life. And, of course, they’re wrong, wrong, wrong.”
This was the first foray into the political arena for Ryan, a self-made millionaire who had left his career as an investment banker to teach at a Chicago inner-city school.
For months, he has trailed the Democratic candidate, state Sen. Obama Barack.
A poll conducted last month by the Chicago Tribune and WGN-TV showed that Obama held a 22% lead over Ryan.
The impending retirement of Republican Sen. Peter Fitzgerald drew 15 contenders into the race — seven of whom are millionaires.
It also unleashed a debate about personal morals, drug use and messy divorces.
Multimillionaire Blair Hull, a Democrat, watched his political support plummet during the primary after local media reported that he allegedly had abused and threatened to kill his ex-wife, Brenda Sexton.
After Hull’s marital problems became public last spring, Ryan released part of his divorce records.
But he omitted his ex-wife’s allegations about the sex clubs. Jeri Ryan is best known for her television roles in “Star Trek Voyager” and “Boston Public.”
Jack Ryan at the time said he would not release the remainder of the sealed file out of concern for his young son. His campaign sought to play down the allegations, saying they were nothing more than “an unprecedented smear campaign.”
The Tribune and WLS-TV sued to get access to the full court file.
Last week, a Los Angeles judge ordered the material be made public.
Ryan has said the couple did attend one sex club in Paris, but left because it made them feel uncomfortable.
Illinois Republican leaders said they already were considering candidates to replace Ryan on the ballot in November, among them former state Board of Education Chairman Ron Gidwitz, state Sen. Steve Rauschenberger and dairy owner Jim Oberweis.
Gidwitz and Oberweis lost to Ryan in the March primary.
“We intend to fight for this seat,” said Judy Baar Topinka, chairwoman of the Illinois Republican Party. “We will have a good candidate, a winning candidate.”
Beckham reported from Chicago and Huffstutter from Milwaukee.
Wealthy first-time political candidate Stephen J. Cloobeck is spending $1.4 million on television ads starting Tuesday — the first barrage of cable and broadcast messaging that Californians will likely be bombarded with in next year’s governor’s election.
Cloobeck’s campaign declined to preview the 30-second ad on Monday, but the candidate confirmed the size of the ad buy. Public records of advertising purchases show that Cloobeck bought space in every California market on cable, as well as broadcast television time in Sacramento. He also bought time in New York City and Washington, D.C. — as well as West Palm Beach, the location of President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago.
Cloobeck confirmed the size of the buy; a campaign advisor confirmed that they would run through Monday and that he was also launching a social-media effort.
“I will always Fight for California. All Californians deserve the contract to be fulfilled for an affordable livable workable state,” Cloobeck said in a text message. “Watch [the ad] and you will see how a conservative Democrat fights for All Californians.”
The candidates need to raise their name recognition among California’s 22.9 million registered voters, which makes Cloobeck’s early advertising understandable, according to Democratic strategists.
“It’s unprecedented for regular business. Not for this race,” said Democratic media buyer Sheri Sadler, who is not currently affiliated with a candidate in the contest.
It’s also not unprecedented for Cloobeck, a Beverly Hills philanthropist and businessman. He announced his gubernatorial run in November with a fusillade of television and digital ads.
While the 63-year-old’s exact net worth is unclear, he made his fortune in real estate and hospitality. He founded Diamond Resorts International, a timeshare and vacation property company, which he sold in 2016. Earlier, he appeared on several episodes of the reality-television show “Undercover Boss,” which sends executives in disguise into low-level jobs at their businesses.
While Cloobeck has not run for office before, he has long been a prodigious Democratic donor and fundraiser. He also played a critical role in renaming the airport in Las Vegas after the late Sen. Harry Reid, whom he describes as a father figure. The bookshelves at his sprawling Beverly Hills mansion are lined with pictures of himself with Democratic presidents and many other prominent members of the party.
Cloobeck announced last week that he was contributing $10 million to his campaign, on top of the $3 million he initially seeded it with. His wealth was on vivid display at the California Democratic Party‘s spring convention, where canvassers who said they were paid $25 per hour wore royal blue shirts emblazoned with his name chanted his name. Cloobeck said at the time that his campaign had spent “probably a couple hundred thousand dollars” on the effort.
CALVERT CITY, Ky. — Republican Nate Morris had deftly warmed up a crowd of party faithful, gushing about President Donald Trump and recounting his own life’s journey — from hardscrabble childhood to wealthy entrepreneur — when he turned his attention to the man he wants to replace, Sen. Mitch McConnell.
That’s when things got feisty. While bashing Kentucky’s longest-serving senator at a GOP dinner on the eve of Saturday’s Fancy Farm picnic, a tradition-laden stop on the state’s political circuit, Morris was cut off in midsentence by a party activist in the crowd, who noted that McConnell isn’t seeking reelection and pointedly asked Morris: “What are you running on?”
Morris touted his hard line stance on immigration and defended Trump’s tariffs as a boon for American manufacturing. But he didn’t retreat from his harsh critique of McConnell.
“We’ve seen 40 years of doing it the same way,” Morris said. “And, yes, he’s not on the ballot, but his legacy is on the ballot. Do you want 40 more years of that? I don’t think you do.”
McConnell’s blunt-force approach used against him
The pushback from a county GOP chairman revealed the political risks of attacking the 83-year-old McConnell in the twilight of his career. Towering over Kentucky politics for decades, McConnell is regarded as the master strategist behind the GOP’s rise to power in a state long dominated by Democrats. The state Republican headquarters bears McConnell’s name. As the longest-serving Senate party leader in U.S. history, McConnell guided Republican policymaking and helped forge a conservative Supreme Court. Back home, his appropriating skills showered Kentucky with federal funding.
Now, his blunt-force style of campaigning — which undercut so many foes — is being used against him.
Morris is running against two other prominent Republicans — U.S. Rep. Andy Barr and former state Attorney General Daniel Cameron — for McConnell’s seat. The outcome will be decided in the spring primary next year. Kentucky hasn’t elected a Democrat to the Senate since Wendell Ford in 1992.
All three Republican hopefuls lavish praise on Trump — in hopes of landing his endorsement — but also have ties to McConnell, who mentored generations of aspirational Republicans. Cameron and Barr have chided McConnell at times, but it’s been mild compared to Morris’ attacks. Morris interned for McConnell but glosses over that connection.
McConnell pushes back
At events surrounding the Fancy Farm picnic, an event long known for caustic zingers that he has always relished, McConnell showed no sign of backing down.
“Surely this isn’t true, but I’ve heard that one of the candidates running for my office wants to be different,” McConnell told a Republican crowd that included Morris at a pre-picnic breakfast in Mayfield. “Now, I’m wondering how you’d want to be different from the longest-serving Senate leader in American history. I’m wondering how you’d want to be different in supporting President Trump.”
McConnell received multiple standing ovations. Morris stayed seated.
McConnell has consistently voted for Trump’s policies more often than Kentucky’s other Republican senator, Rand Paul, according to a Congressional Quarterly voting analysis. McConnell recently supported Trump’s signature tax and spending measure. Paul opposed it, saying it would drive up debt.
Yet Morris has taken on McConnell, who has famously had an up-and-down relationship with Trump.
McConnell teamed with Trump to put conservatives on the federal bench and pass tax cuts during the president’s first term. McConnell also guided the Senate — and Trump — through two impeachment trials that ended in acquittals. But the relationship was severed after McConnell blamed Trump for “disgraceful” acts in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack by Trump’s supporters.
McConnell endorsed Trump in 2024, but in a biography by Michael Tackett of The Associated Press, released shortly before the election, McConnell described him as “a despicable human being.”
Running against career politicians
Morris, who started a waste management technology company, says the senator has been insufficiently loyal to Trump and allowed festering issues like immigration and the national debt to grow worse during his years in Senate leadership.
Morris wants to tether his opponents to McConnell while running on anti-establishment themes that his campaign thinks will appeal to legions of Trump supporters in the Bluegrass State.
“Let’s face it, folks, career politicians have run this country off a cliff,” Morris said.
Morris’ rivals sum up the anti-McConnell attacks as an angry, backward-looking message. Cameron called it a diversionary tactic to obscure what he said is Morris’ lack of both a message and credibility as a supporter of Trump’s MAGA movement.
“He can’t talk about his actual record. So he has to choose to pick on an 83-year-old,” Cameron said.
At Fancy Farm, where candidates hurl insults at one another against a backdrop of bingo games and barbecue feasts, Morris took a swipe at McConnell’s health.
“I have a serious question: who here can honestly tell me that it’s a good thing to have a senior citizen who freezes on national television during his press conferences as our U.S. senator?” Morris said. “It seems, to me, maybe just maybe, Mitch’s time to leave the Senate was a long time ago.”
McConnell had his customary front-row seat for much of the event but wasn’t there for Morris’ remarks. He typically leaves before all the speeches are delivered and exited before his would-be successors spoke.
Living by the sword
McConnell complimented Trump in his speech, singling out Trump’s bombing of Iranian nuclear sites.
“He turned Iran’s nuclear program into a pile of rocks,” McConnell, a steadfast advocate for a muscular U.S. foreign policy, said to cheers.
At the GOP dinner the night before in Calvert City, where candidates typically are more politely received, party activist Frank Amaro confronted Morris for his anti-McConnell barrage.
“He keeps bashing Mitch McConnell like he’s running against Mitch McConnell,” Amaro, a county Republican chairman, said afterward. “Overall, he’s helped Kentucky and the United States, especially our Supreme Court, more than any other U.S. senator in this country.”
But Morris’ blistering assessment of McConnell hit the mark with Trump supporter Patrick Marion, who applied the dreaded Republican-in-Name-Only label to McConnell.
“Personally, I think Mitch has been a RINO for way too long,” Marion said later. “I don’t think he was a true MAGA supporter of President Trump.”
Afterward, Morris was in no mood to back off.
“He’s the nastiest politician maybe in the history of this state if not in the history of this country,” Morris said of McConnell. “Look, you live by the sword, you die by the sword.”
For months, candidates in the race to become California’s next governor had waited for a pivotal question to be settled: Will former Vice President Kamala Harris run or not?
With Harris’ announcement this week that she’s out, a new question arose: Who’s the front-runner now?
Because of Harris’ star power, the answer is far from simple. For months, other candidates saw their campaign planning and fundraising undercut by the possibility she would run, meaning the race got a big reset seconds after Harris made her announcement Wednesday.
Some political observers give the nod to former U.S. Rep. Katie Porter, who appears to have a small leg up over her opponents.
Porter was the only Democrat to receive double-digit support in multiple polls when Harris was not included in the field.
A prodigious fundraiser while she was in Congress representing an Orange County district, Porter reported a strong infusion of cash in the months after launching her campaign in March, and said she raised $250,000 in the 36 hours after Harris’ announcement.
Katie Porter, a lawyer who served as a U.S. representative from California from 2019 to 2025, speaks at the Women’s Caucus at the California Democratic Party Convention at the Anaheim Hilton and Convention Center in May.
(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)
“The enthusiasm we’re seeing from donors at every level shows that Californians know how critical this race is,” Porter said in an email blast.
Other candidates — including Xavier Becerra, U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services in the Biden administration and a former California attorney general — have also tried to assert that, with Harris out, they are moving up.
“BECERRA CAMPAIGN BUILDING MOMENTUM IN ‘WIDE OPEN’ RACE,” read the subject line of an email sent Friday by the Becerra campaign, saying he is “well-positioned to unite a broad swath of voters around his plans to make health care and housing less expensive and more accessible.”
Xavier Becerra, attorney and former United States secretary of Health and Human Services, speaks at the labor caucus at the California Democratic Party Convention at the Anaheim Hilton and Convention Center in May.
(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)
Outside observers, however, said that none of the candidates really stand out from the pack at the moment.
“That these remaining candidates are jockeying for bragging rights about who may be the front-runner — it’s to be expected, but it’s ludicrous,” said Garry South, a veteran Democratic strategist who has worked on a number of past gubernatorial campaigns, including for former Gov. Gray Davis.
“With Harris opting out, there will likely be no obvious front-runner among the remainder of the current field for quite some time,” South said. “None of these candidates start out with statewide name recognition.”
With such a wide-open field, factors such as endorsements and communication strategies will be important to watch, experts said. So will the candidates’ ability to raise money and use it to broaden their appeal.
“I would start spending money on social media, on television advertising, on every single platform I could find to build up my name ID,” South said, but “none of them have enough money to do that at the moment.”
Experience and endorsements
With Harris out, will she back someone else?
“Obviously if she did endorse, that would be a big plus” for whichever candidate she rallied behind, said John Pitney, a professor of politics at Claremont McKenna College.
Harris has long relationships with several of the candidates in the race. A source familiar with her thinking told The Times after Harris bowed out that she was still considering whether and how to approach the governor’s race.
Other endorsements could affect the race as well. Hours after Harris announced her decision, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), the influential former House Speaker, appeared on CNN to endorse Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, whom she has known for years.
“We have many great candidates, one in particular Eleni Tsakopoulos, whom I support,” Pelosi said, referring to Kounalakis by her maiden name.
Eleni Kounalakis, lieutenant governor of California, speaks at the Women’s Caucus at the California Democratic Party Convention at the Anaheim Hilton and Convention Center in May.
(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)
Kounalakis’ father, the wealthy developer Angelo Tsakopoulos, helped bankroll an independent expenditure committee supporting his daughter’s 2018 campaign for lieutenant governor. Political observers are watching to see if he dumps money into a similar effort backing her gubernatorial campaign.
Pitney said Pelosi’s opinion “would carry a lot more weight” if she were still speaker. He said it “isn’t necessarily going to sway a large chunk of the electorate,” but could be important if it sways Bay Area donors.
A former GOP legislative aide and national party staffer who renounced his membership in the Republican Party the night Trump was elected in 2016, Pitney said that endorsements are far from a determining factor in today’s political landscape.
“I hesitate to rule anybody out, because very often candidates seem to come out of nowhere — like Mamdani in New York City,” he said, referring to the sudden rise and stunning upset primary win of 33-year-old democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani in the New York mayoral race.
Pitney added that experience in government and administrative leadership also matters, but could also cut against candidates at a time when many voters are frustrated and want something new.
Antonio Villaraigosa speaks to the Latino Caucus at the Calififornia Democratic Convention at the Anaheim Convention Center in May..
(Carlin Stiehl/Los Angeles Times)
For example, Antonio Villaraigosa, the former state Assembly speaker and L.A. mayor who is in his 70s, “obviously has a long history, but that long history is both an advantage and a disadvantage,” Pitney said.
Villaraigosa has said his campaign is “about the future.” But voters “may not regard him as a fresh face,” Pitney said.
Name recognition and money
None of the current candidates for governor have the same profile as Harris. In fact, they are broadly unknown to huge swaths of the electorate.
That means they have their work cut out for them, Pitney and South said — namely in terms of fundraising.
South said that there “is no question that the Democratic donor base has basically been sitting on their haunches waiting to see what Harris is going to do.”
But, he said, he hasn’t seen any sign yet that donors have picked a favorite candidate now that she’s out, either — which is a problem for candidates with little or no name recognition.
“None of these candidates in the remaining field with Harris out have enough money in the bank to run a statewide campaign for governor,” he said.
South said that could change if Kounalakis gets another major infusion of cash from her father and once again taps her personal wealth.
At the same time, there could also be a “huge blowback” from that sort of splashy family spending, South said, especially if Kounalakis’ opponents pounced on it as distasteful.
“We have not tended in this state to elect moneyed people who try to buy the governor’s race,” he said.
South said he is watching to see if big Bay Area donors decide to back Porter “because of her profile as a progressive.”
Los Angeles developer and 2022 mayoral candidate Rick Caruso “could be a force” if he were to enter the race, Pitney said, because “he has prominence in Southern California and also has a lot of money.”
Fundraising reports
The most recent fundraising reports, which were due Thursday night, shine a light on candidates’ coffers — but only through the end of June, well before Harris dropped out.
The Democrats who do not have the potential to self-fund their campaigns reported having millions of dollars in cash on hand as of June 30, including some who transferred money from prior campaign committees to their gubernatorial accounts.
Former legislative leader Toni Atkins reported having $4.3 million in the campaign, while raising $648,000 and spending $549,000 in the first six months of this year.
Gubernatorial candidate Toni Atkins speaks to supporters at the California Democratic Convention at the Anaheim Convention Center in May.
(Carlin Stiehl/Los Angeles Times)
Villaraigosa raised $1.1 million and spent $550,000 this year, but reported $3.3 million cash on hand based on fundraising he did last year.
Becerra had $2.1 million in the bank after raising $2.5 million and spending $449,000 in the first six months of the year.
Porter reported raising $2.5 million and spending $449,000 since launching her campaign in March. She said she has $2.1 million in the bank.
Unlike the other candidates, Porter’s campaign revealed her fundraising because her filing on the state disclosure website didn’t show any dollar figures.
Spokesman Nathan Click said her number of small-dollar donors crashed the state’s system, and that they had been working with state officials to get the documents displayed on the secretary of state’s website all day Friday. He said most of Porter’s 34,000 donors contributed less than $200 each.
Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco reported raising $1.6 million and spending $609,000 this year, leaving him with $1 million in the bank.
A few candidates reported mediocre fundraising numbers, but have personal wealth they can draw on.
Kounalakis raised just over $100,000 and spent nearly three times as much during the first half of this year. She has more than $4.6 million on hand and millions more in her lieutenant governor campaign account, although some of that money can’t be transferred because of campaign finance rules.
Businessman Stephen J. Cloobeck, a Los Angeles Democrat, raised about $160,000 and spent $1.5 million — including more than $1 million on consultants. He had about $729,000 on hand at the end of the period. He also said he made a $10-million contribution Friday that he said “turbocharged” his campaign.
Philanthropist and businessman Stephen Cloobeck, right, takes a photo with a supporter after speaking about his candidacy for California governor during the labor caucus at the California Democratic Party Convention at the Anaheim Hilton and Convention Center in May.
(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)
“One of my many advantages is that I’m not a politician and I am not compromised,” Cloobeck said.
Former Fox News host Steve Hilton, a Republican candidate, raised about $1.5 million, of which $200,000 was a personal loan. Hilton spent about $1 million and has a little less than $800,000 in the bank.
At the lowest end of the fundraising were former state controller Betty Yee, who raised almost $238,000 and spent $255,000, with $637,000 on hand; and state schools superintendent Tony Thurmond, who raised about $70,000, spent about $180,000 and had almost $560,000 on hand.
Both Yee and Thurmond told The Times last month that fundraising had slowed while Democratic donors waited on Harris to make a decision.
Whether you like Harris or not, a possible run by the XX chromosome former vice president raises a perennial conundrum: Can a woman win the presidency?
She’s a professor of government and director of the Women’s and Gender Studies Program at Georgetown University. She points out that post-election, Democrats can’t figure out who they are or what they stand for. In that disarray, it may seem easy and safe in 2028 to travel the well-worn route of “a straight, old white guy who fills the status quo.”
That may be especially true in the Trump era, when an increasingly vocal and empowered slice of America seems to believe that women do, in fact, belong in the kitchen making sanwhiches, far away from any decision beyond turkey or ham.
Post-2024, Harris’ defeat — and deciphering what it means — has caused a lot of “morning-after anxiety and agita,” she said. “We’re all doing research, we’re all in the field trying to figure this out.”
While confused Democrats diddle in private with their feelings, Republicans have made race and gender the center of their platform, even if they cloak it under economic talk. The party’s position on race has become painfully clear with its stance that all undocumented immigrants are criminals and deserving of horrific detention in places such as “Alligator Alcatraz” or even foreign prisons known for torture.
The Republican position on women is slightly more cloaked, but no less retrograde. Whether it’s the refusal to tell the public how Trump is included in the Epstein files, the swift and brutal erosion of reproductive rights, or claims, such as the one by far-right podcaster Charlie Kirk, that the only reason for women to attend college should be to get a “Mrs.” degree, Republicans have made little secret of the fact that equality is not part of their package.
Although Trump’s approval ratings have tanked over immigration, he did win just over half of the popular vote last fall. So that’s a lot of Americans who either agree with him, or at least aren’t bothered by these pre-civil rights ideas on race and gender.
Add to that reality the eager pack of nice, safe Democratic white guys who are lining up for their own chance at the Oval Office — our current California governor included — and it does beg the question for the left: Is a woman worth the risk?
“I’ve definitely seen and heard consultants and, you know, even anxious women donors say, ‘Maybe this means we can’t run a woman.’ And I think it’s completely normal for certain elements of the party to be anxious about gender,” said Mini Timmaraju, president and CEO of Reproductive Freedom for All, a grassroots advocacy group.
She too thinks the gender question is “logical” since it has been blamed — though not by her — as “the reason we lost to Donald Trump twice in a row, right? Whereas Biden was able to beat him.”
While Timmaraju is clear that those losses can’t — and shouldn’t — be tied to gender alone, gender also can’t be ignored when the margins are thin.
Joseph Geevarghese, executive director of the progressive political organizing group Our Revolution, which backed Bernie Sanders for president in 2016, said that gender and race are always a factor, but he believes the bigger question for any candidate in 2028 will be their platform.
Harris, he said, “lost not because she was a woman. She lost because she did not embrace an economic populist message. And I think the electorate is angry about their standard of living declining, and they’re angry about the elites controlling D.C. and enriching themselves.”
Greevarghese told me he sees an opposite momentum building within the party and the electorate — a desire to not play it safe.
“Whoever it is — male, female, gay, straight, Black, white, Asian — the candidate’s got to have a critique of this moment, and it can’t be a normie Dem.”
Brown, the professor, adds, rightfully, that looking at the question of a female candidate’s chances through the lens of just Harris is too narrow. There are lots of women likely to jump into the race. Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are just two names already in the mix. Brown adds that an outside contender such as a woman from a political dynasty (think Obama) or a celebrity along the lines of Trump could also make headway.
The criticisms of Harris, with her baggage of losing the election and critiques of how she handled the campaign and the media, may not dog another female candidate, especially with voters.
“Whether Kamala runs again or not, I’m optimistic that the American people will vote for a female president,” Vanessa Cardenas told me. She is the executive director of America’s Voice, an advocacy group for immigrants’ rights.
“After the chaos, cruelty and incompetence of the Trump presidency, Latino voters, like most Americans, will reward candidates who can speak most authentically and seem most ready to fight for an alternative vision of America,” she said. “I believe women, and women of color, can credibility and forcibly speak to the need for change rooted in the lived experiences of their communities.”
Timmaraju said that regardless of what Harris decides, Democrats will probably have one of the most robust primaries in recent times — which can only be good for the party and for voters.
And rather than asking, “Can a woman win?” the better question would be, “Do we really want a system that won’t let them try?”
The Democrats running for California governor have spent the spring and summer working to win over the powerful donors and interest groups who could help them squeak through a competitive primary election.
But the candidates, and many deep-pocketed Democrats, are still waiting for the decision that will have the biggest impact on the race: whether former Vice President Kamala Harris is running.
Since Harris lost to President Trump in November, the race to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom has been in suspended animation, with candidates trying to plan their campaigns without knowing who their biggest opponents will be. A few are making contingency plans to run for other offices. And some major donors are waiting to write big checks.
The Democrats in the race are talking to many of the same potential donors, Thurmond said, and most have the same question: “Is she going to run?” The only answer, Thurmond said, is an unsatisfying one: “We don’t know.”
Since leaving Washington in January, Harris has mostly stayed out of the public eye, settling back into her Brentwood home with her husband, Doug Emhoff, and talking to close friends and confidantes about what she should do next. She is weighing whether to leave politics, run for governor or run for president for a third time. She is expected to make a decision about the gubernatorial race by the end of summer.
The Democrats who are already running for governor lack Harris’ star power, and her entry could upend the race. But the former vice president would also face questions about her 107-day sprint to the White House, what she knew about President Biden’s decline and whether someone who has run unsuccessfully for president twice really wants to be California’s governor.
“She is looking closely where is the best place to put her energy and focus and her time,” said Debbie Mesloh, a longtime Harris ally.
Harris had originally planned to take a two-week vacation at the end of this month but has canceled her trip, according to someone familiar with her plans.
Harris has also been in New York, where she attended Broadway plays and the exclusive Met Gala; in San Francisco, where she dined with her niece Meena at the high-end Japanese restaurant Shoji; and in Los Angeles, where she has shopped for groceries at a 99 Ranch Market in Westwood and the Brentwood Farmers Market.
As the months have worn on, some gubernatorial campaigns have started to think that Harris’ victory feels like less of a foregone conclusion than if she’d announced in January after leaving office.
Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, former Biden Cabinet secretary Xavier Becerra and former U.S. Rep. Katie Porter of Irvine have said that they will stay in the race no matter what.
Veteran state Senate leader Toni Atkins of San Diego said she is also staying in if Harris runs, saying in a statement that “while the vice president has her own path, our campaign is moving full speed ahead.”
Former state Controller Betty Yee said in an interview this week that even if Harris runs, she is staying in, too.
“No, no, no,” Yee said, of the possibility of seeking another statewide office. Being governor, she said, “is what I feel like I’ve prepared to do. I will be staying in the race and really leaning into my fiscal and financial background.”
Yee said when she talks to donors, they want to know two things: how California can push back against the Trump administration, and what she will do if Harris enters the race.
Dan Newman, a political strategist who’s worked for Newsom, Harris and several of the gubernatorial candidates, said that the race is at an odd inflection point, with candidates who “don’t know who their potential voters are, because they don’t know who they’re running against,” and some donors who are waiting — at least for now — to write big checks.
“They’ve got a good excuse to not give, because even if they are a big fan of a candidate who’s in the race now, they don’t know if the candidate will stay in the race,” Newman said. “Then there are others who don’t want to give to someone who might run against her.”
Eric Jaye, a political strategist who previously worked for Villaraigosa’s 2018 gubernatorial campaign and advised Newsom when he was mayor of San Francisco, said he’s hearing “frustration” from donors who are ready to see the race pick up speed.
“They’re not going to wait much longer,” Jaye said. “There are going to be donors who say, ‘We have to go. We’re not going to wait for you.’”
But even if Harris entered, that wouldn’t be a guarantee that donors would back her again, including those who are angry that she spent nearly $1.5 billion in campaign funds in her compressed campaign for the White House in 2024.
“The money is very, very upset with her,” said gubernatorial candidate Stephen Cloobeck, a businessman and Democratic donor who is running for California governor. “They’re my friends. I’m part of that money. Everyone is thoroughly reeling.”
The amount of money that candidates raise is one way to gauge their support — and prospects. That picture remains a little fuzzy, though, since gubernatorial candidates have until July 31 to report their fundraising hauls from the first half of the year.
The only candidate to release numbers so far is Becerra, who said he raised $2.4 million since entering the race in early April, including a $1.1-million transfer from his congressional campaign account. Becerra’s campaign has $2 million on hand, including the largest contributions allowed by law — $39,200 — from the politically connected Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians and Pechanga Band of Indians.
Campaigns are required to report contributions of $5,000 or more shortly after they receive them. Those figures don’t represent total fundraising, but can still show a campaign’s trajectory.
Three of the eight candidates have raised less than $100,000 this year in chunks of more than $5,000 at a time, state data show. Yee reported $71,900 and Thurmond, $32,500.
Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis reported raising $70,000, including $5,000 from Google. Her campaign said Kounalakis, who has been raising money since entering the race in April 2023, has $9 million on hand.
“I want to be clear that I’m in this race to win,” Kounalakis said.
Villaraigosa, who entered the race last summer, has raised almost $1 million this year through large donations, data show. Atkins reported about $381,000 this year, and Cloobeck, about $132,000.
Porter, who entered the race in March, reported almost $475,000 in larger contributions, according to state data. She also transferred $942,000 from her U.S. Senate account to her gubernatorial account, according to federal filings made public Tuesday.
Last month, New York City’s mayoral race drew national attention when Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani secured a stunning victory over former governor and political veteran Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary, thanks to the relatively new system of ranked-choice voting. Less noticed were the 28 contested New York City Council races on the same ballot, 10 of which also had no candidate receiving more than 50% of the vote.
In most places, including in most of California, such messy results would trigger a costly runoff between the top two finishers in each race. But not in New York City, where voters rank every candidate in order of preference on their ballots. If no one receives more than 50% of the first-choice votes, whichever candidate received the fewest first-choice votes is eliminated, and voters whose ballots had that person in the top position are then counted as supporters of their second choice. This process of elimination and consolidation continues until one candidate receives more than 50% of the vote.
Perhaps Mamdani would have won the primary in a runoff against Cuomo, but he didn’t have to. This voting system reflected the will of the people without dragging out campaign season or asking voters to head to the polls an extra time.
Advocates say ranked-choice voting ensures your vote isn’t wasted if your top choice is eliminated. Proponents also contend that the system discourages negative campaigning (instead fosteringcross-endorsements), improves representation for women and people of color, promotes more viable competition, reduces election costs and eliminates the “spoiler effect” from vote siphoning.
Ranked-choice voting is gaining traction, particularly in U.S. cities. Currently, 63 jurisdictions nationwide use some form of ranked-choice voting, including seven in California: Albany, Berkeley, Oakland, Redondo Beach, San Francisco and San Leandro.
Pollingshows strong support for ranked-choice voting among residents of California cities that have it, and most of those cities increased the diversity of their governing bodies after implementation. These systems have already saved money for California taxpayers by eliminating costly runoff elections.
What would change if California implemented ranked-choice voting for state offices, or if general elections in the city of Los Angeles were decided this way? It would play out differently than in New York.
Unlike New York, which holds party primaries, most California jurisdictions hold nonpartisan primary elections in which all parties run on the same ticket — known as a top-two or jungle primary. This means when a candidate loses in a state or local primary, they can’t just switch parties or run as an independent to get on the general election ballot, as Cuomo now could.
California’s nonpartisan elections also mean that a candidate’s party affiliation plays a competitive role in primaries, unlike in New York City. Because of this, candidates will sometimes strategically register with the dominant party before they run in California, as Rick Caruso did in 2022. This wouldn’t necessarily change under ranked-choice voting, but some candidates might feel less inclined to employ this tactic if they think they have a chance at getting a voter’s second- or third-choice votes while running as a candidate of their preferred party.
There are two other crucial differences between California elections and New York races, one at the local level and one at the state level.
Locally, most jurisdictions, including the city of Los Angeles, hold a general election only if no candidate wins more than 50% of the primary vote. Thus ranked-choice voting would eliminate the need for primary elections altogether in most California races. This would save jurisdictions money and probably increase voter turnout, given that more people traditionally vote in general elections than in primaries.
In contrast, California uses a top-two primary system for most state and federal races, which advances the top two vote-getters, regardless of party affiliation or margin of victory, to the general election. While this avoids costly runoffs, it often results in one-party general elections, especially in heavily partisan districts. Ranked-choice voting wouldn’t prevent that scenario, but it might give underrepresented parties a better shot at advancing in competitive races.
Less known is whether ranked-choice voting would alter the political makeup of representation if broadly implemented in California. Strategic crossover voting — in which Republicans and Democrats rank moderate candidates from the other party — could lead to more centrist outcomes. Likewise, in areas where one party dominates, consistent second-choice support for moderate candidates from other parties could move the controlling party toward the center. Conversely, in areas with many hard-left or hard-right voters, ranked-choice voting could push moderates to adopt more extreme positions to gain second- or third-choice support.
The combination of ranked-choice voting with California’s nonpartisan system would likely produce unique strategic incentives and political realignments unimaginable in cities with partisan primaries.
Campaign styles could also change. Candidates may tone down attacks and even form alliances with like-minded rivals, as progressives did in New York, to earn second-choice votes.
Those unknowns may make some state and local leaders hesitant to change the way we vote. After all, those who’ve won office through the current system are often the least eager to change it. But hesitation shouldn’t overshadow the potential benefits: lower costs, broader engagement, more representative outcomes and less divisive politics.
If California is serious about reforming its increasingly expensive and polarized electoral system, ranked-choice voting is worth a closer look.
Sean McMorris is the California Common Cause program manager for transparency, ethics and accountability.
Though many voters were undecided, Harris was the choice of 41% of survey respondents, compared to 29% who opted for an unnamed Republican candidate, according to a poll by the University of California Irvine. She also had the greatest favorability ratings and is most well known compared to all of the candidates who have announced.
“The path to governor seems well-paved for Vice President Harris if she decides to run,” said Jon Gould, dean of UCI’s School of Social Ecology, in a statement. “Although she lacks majority support at the moment, people know her better than the other candidates and generally view her favorably.”
Only 5% of Californians had never heard of Harris, while every other announced candidate was unknown by a far larger number of respondents, including those who had run for statewide office previously. Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who ran for governor in 2018, was unknown by 47% of survey respondents; 48% were unfamiliar with former Rep. Katie Porter of Irvine, who ran for U.S. Senate in 2024.
When tested against candidates who have announced, Harris was the choice of 24% of voters, the only candidate to crack double digits, according to the poll. However, 40% of respondents were undecided, according to the poll.
Among Democrats, who account for 47% of the state’s voters as of February, Harris had the support of nearly half, while every announced candidate had single-digit support. Harris led among Californians in every region and in every racial group, according to the poll.
Billionaire real estate developer Rick Caruso, a Democrat who unsuccessfully ran for mayor of Los Angeles in 2022 and is reportedly debating whether to run for mayor again or governor, was the favored choice of GOP voters, with the backing of 27% of survey respondents.
Harris, whose representatives did not respond to a request for comment, is expected to decide whether she enters the race by the end of the summer, a delay that has prompted criticism from several candidates in the crowded field of candidates who have already announced their bids.
The statewide poll of 4,143 Californians was conducted online in two separate polls, one between May 27 and June 2, and another between May 29 and June 4. The margin of error in either direction varies between 2.9% and 3.6%, according to UCI.
NEW YORK — Zohran Mamdani has won New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary, a new vote count confirmed Tuesday, cementing his stunning upset of former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and sending him to the general election.
The Associated Press called the race after the results of the city’s ranked choice voting tabulation were released and showed Mamdani trouncing Cuomo by 12 percentage points.
In a statement, Mamdani said he was humbled by the support he received in the primary and started turning his attention to the general election.
“Last Tuesday, Democrats spoke in a clear voice, delivering a mandate for an affordable city, a politics of the future, and a leader unafraid to fight back against rising authoritarianism,” he said. “I am humbled by the support of more than 545,000 New Yorkers who voted for our campaign and am excited to expand this coalition even further as we defeat Eric Adams and win a city government that puts working people first.”
Mamdani’s win had been widely expected since he took a commanding lead after the polls closed a week ago, falling just short of the 50% of the vote needed to avoid another count under the city’s ranked choice voting model. The system allows voters’ other preferences to be counted if their top candidate falls out of the running.
Mamdani, who declared victory the night of the June 24 primary, will face a general election field that includes incumbent Mayor Eric Adams as well as independent candidate Jim Walden and Republican Curtis Sliwa.
The former governor, down but not out
Cuomo conceded defeat just hours after the polls closed last week but is contemplating whether to run in the general election on an independent ballot line. After the release of Tuesday’s vote count, Cuomo spokesperson Rich Azzopardi said, “We’ll be continuing conversations with people from all across the city while determining next steps.”
“Extremism, division and empty promises are not the answer to this city’s problems, and while this was a look at what motivates a slice of our primary electorate, it does not represent the majority,” Azzopardi said. “The financial instability of our families is the priority here, which is why actionable solutions, results and outcomes matter so much.”
Mamdani, a 33-year-old democratic socialist and member of the state Assembly, was virtually unknown when he launched his candidacy centered on a bold slate of populist ideas. But he built an energetic campaign that ran circles around Cuomo as the older, more moderate Democrat tried to come back from the sexual harassment scandal that led to his resignation four years ago.
The results, even before they were finalized, sent a shockwave through the political world.
Democratic support?
Mamdani’s campaign, which was focused on lowering the cost of living, claims it has found a new blueprint for Democrats who have at times appeared rudderless during President Trump’s climb back to power.
The Democratic establishment has approached Mamdani with caution. Many of its big players applauded his campaign but don’t seem ready to throw their full support behind the young progressive, whose past criticisms of law enforcement, use of the word “genocide” to describe the Israeli government’s actions in Gaza and “democratic socialist” label amount to landmines for some in the party.
If elected, Mamdani would be the city’s first Muslim mayor and its first of Indian American decent. He would also be one of its youngest.
Opposition mounts
For Republicans, Mamdani has already provided a new angle for attack. Trump and others in the GOP have begun to launch broadsides at him, moving to cast Mamdani as the epitome of leftist excess ahead of consequential elections elsewhere this year and next.
“If I’m a Republican, I want this guy to win,” said Grant Reeher, a political science professor at Syracuse University. “Because I want to be able to compare and contrast my campaign as a Republican, in a national election, to the idea of, ‘This is where the Democratic Party is.’”
New York City’s ranked choice voting model allows voters to list up to five candidates on their ballots in order of preference. If a single candidate is the first choice of more than 50% of voters, then that person wins the race outright. Since no candidate cleared that bar on the night of the primary, the ranked choice voting process kicked in. The board is scheduled to certify the election on July 15.
Mamdani has been a member of the state Assembly since 2021, and has characterized his inexperience as a potential asset. His campaign promised free city buses, free child care, a rent freeze for people living in rent-stabilized apartments, government-run grocery stores and more, all paid for with taxes on the wealthy. Critics have slammed his agenda as politically unrealistic.
Cuomo ran a campaign centered on his extensive experience, casting himself as the only candidate capable of saving a city he said had spun out of control. During the campaign, he focused heavily on combating antisemitism and leaned on his name recognition and juggernaut fundraising operation rather than mingling with voters.
Confronted with the sexual harassment allegations that ended his tenure as governor, he denied wrongdoing, maintaining that the scandal was driven by politics and that voters were ready to move on.
Cuomo did not remove his name from the November ballot last week, ahead of a procedural deadline to do so, and has said he is still considering whether to mount an actual campaign for the office.
Adams, while still a Democrat, is running in the November election as an independent. He dropped out of the Democratic primary in April after he was severely wounded by his now-dismissed federal bribery case. Though he had done little in the way of campaigning since then, he reignited his reelection operation in the days after Mamdani declared victory, calling it a choice between a candidate with a “blue collar” and one with a “silver spoon.”
There were 20 Republican presidential debates and not one featured the California political-strategist-turned-openly-gay-White-House-hopeful, although he came close — or at least should have — to qualifying for a session last summer, if only Fox News hadn’t changed the rules.
Or so he says. The Federal Election Commission, after reviewing Karger’s complaint, disagreed and found no evidence of wrongdoing. Karger returned this week from a campaign swing through Utah to find the FEC response in a pile of mail at his home in the Hollywood Hills.
Karger has devoted more than two years of his life to his quixotic White House bid, visiting 31 states and Puerto Rico, where, he exulted, “I beat Ron Paul.” He has spent close to $500,000 out of pocket and, for all his effort, collected precisely zero delegates.
Unlike some of the more delusional candidates who have run, Karger never thought he would become president. His overriding purpose, Karger said in a profile last year, was to appear in at least one debate, sharing a stage with the rest of the Republican field and sending, he hoped, a message to anyone growing up the way he did: confused, conflicted and shamed about his sexual orientation.
“I want to send the message to gay younger people and older people and everyone in between that you can do anything you want in life, and don’t feel bad about yourself and don’t feel you have to live your life the way I did,” Karger said at the time. Now 62, he did not come out publicly until he was 56.
Although he never made it to the debate stage, Karger said his effort was worth every minute and every penny.
“Absolutely!” he exclaimed in a telephone interview from his home overlooking Laurel Canyon. “Without a doubt!”
Karger, who spent 30 years as a political advisor to several top Republicans and major corporations, still talks as if a conversation is a pitch meeting with a potential new client.
“This is money I would have spent anyway,” he said. “Instead of going maybe to Australia for a vacation, I went to Des Moines 15 times. It was money well spent. The response, the emails I’ve gotten have been very, very moving and supportive.”
Regrets? He has a few.
The gay community never rallied behind his campaign, or took up his cause. The Victory Fund, which works to elect openly gay and lesbian candidates — mostly Democrats — gave him a months-long runaround before finally snubbing his campaign, Karger said. “And six or seven years ago,” he huffed, “I had a fund-raiser for them in my house.”
A spokesman for the organization said as a policy matter the group does not discuss candidates it declines to support.
For all the progress the country has made on gay rights, Karger went on, it still has a long way to go. Just before he left Utah on Monday, he had a friendly chat over custard with Willie Billings, the chairman of the Washington County Republican Party, and gave him a souvenir T-shirt and Frisbee. (Utah wraps up the presidential nominating season with its primary June 26.)
Soon after, riding home to California in a balky rental van, Karger received an email from Billings’ wife, Nanette, calling him a “radical idiot” and informing the candidate his campaign swag had been deposited in the trash.
“I would never support him,” Nanette Billings said in an interview — nor, for that matter, any openly gay or lesbian candidate. “The biggest issue is they can’t procreate,” she said, “so I think it’s totally wicked.”
Karger, who has crusaded against the Mormon Church for its efforts to outlaw same-sex marriage, will not back Mitt Romney because the likely GOP nominee shares that opposition. Karger is not sure, however, that he will vote for President Obama, though he was lavish in praising his support for allowing gays and lesbians to marry.
“I think back what to it was like for me as a teenager” in the 1960s, Karger said, and the effect it would have had for the president of the United States to voice that kind of support for gay rights.
As his campaign nears a close, Karger is left to ponder the might-have-beens. What if he’d been allowed to join the other candidates in front of the national TV cameras in just one of those 20 debates?
“Anything could have happened,” he said, laughing. “I could have been the gay Herman Cain!” He paused.
