Astead W. Herndon and Jonathan Martin

Candidates of color are languishing in the low single digits in polls, well behind the four leaders — former Vice President Joe Biden, Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Bernie Sanders of Vermont, and Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana. The divide could become even more pronounced in the coming months: Because of new, more rigorous thresholds for the Democratic debate in December, it is possible that only one nonwhite candidate, Sen. Kamala Harris of California, will qualify.

With the Iowa caucuses three months away, it’s a noticeable sorting of the field for an increasingly multiracial party, whose most recent White House victories were powered by a strong minority turnout for a black nominee. It has frustrated the Democrats seeking a more diverse party leadership — not to mention the affected candidates.

“I’ve had lots of crazy things said to me, like, ‘Is America ready for another black president?’ ” Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey said in an interview. “And I’m confident it’s never been asked of a white candidate, ‘Is America ready for another white president?’ ”

The emergence of an all-white top tier reflects a combination of factors at the intersection of race, money and politics.

Financial support from mostly white, educated elites has helped propel the candidacies of Warren and Buttigieg, while two nonwhite candidates — Booker and Julián Castro, the former housing secretary — have had to explicitly petition supporters for money to stay in the race.

Assumptions about which candidates can or can’t beat President Donald Trump have also hurt minority candidates, with some Democrats fearing that the white working class voters who helped propel Trump to the White House would not support a nonwhite nominee. Donors for Booker and Harris have argued that such implicit bias causes voters and pundits to treat Buttigieg as the natural heir to Biden’s moderate coalition, though their candidates perform better among older black voters, the Democrats’ most loyal moderate voting bloc.

Other Democrats, however, say the blame rests with the candidates themselves. None of the nonwhite challengers have been able to forge a strong coalition or peel away black voters from Biden. Some voters and elected officials, white and nonwhite alike, say privately what the polling suggests: They have not been swept off their feet by any of the candidates of color.

Theodore Johnson, who studies African American politics at the Brennan Center for Justice, said the nonwhite contenders, fairly or not, are suffering in comparison to the country’s first black president.

“Their road is easier because of Obama, but their ability to secure the nomination is harder because they’re not Obama,” Johnson said.

Miscalculations along the way have not helped. Harris has been criticized for waffling on policy, Booker for timidness and Castro for a failed debate attack on Biden in September, which cost him the endorsement of one of his few congressional allies.

Castro, in an interview, zeroed in on “electability” as a problem, saying that concept has created an unspoken skepticism of nonwhite candidates among Democratic voters. People with this viewpoint, he said, can sometimes see nonwhite candidates as vice-presidential options, but not best equipped to lead the party.

“In every election there’s a current, and the current this year seems to be running toward candidates that people believe can take Donald Trump on with a certain profile of voter — the white working class in the Midwest,” said Castro, whose polling support is running at about 1%.

And, he added, “assumptions are being made on who the best type of candidates are to do that.”

Booker said he thinks the tide will turn as more people seek a strong candidate to replace Biden as the moderate alternative to Warren and Sanders. The trouble: getting enough financial support over the next two months to remain viable.

“I have to say this last few weeks, a lot of — a lot more people seem to be coming around,” Booker said, “and I think some of this might be because they’re seeing some weakness to Biden.”

Aimee Allison, founder of She the People, the network of women of color looking to mobilize for the 2020 general election, said it was too early to rule out unforeseen shifts in the race’s current pecking order. But she added that it would take more than an argument for racial representation to win over voters of color and rise in the polls.

“We’ve never had choices like this before, and that makes essentialism less important,” she said. “There’s diversity of opinion. Women of color are sophisticated voters and organizers. We understand that our power and influence can be felt through a candidate of any race and gender with our agenda.”

Any assessment of the performance of nonwhite candidates is complicated by Biden’s enduring appeal with black voters. The former vice president remains popular from his time in the White House serving with President Barack Obama, and he benefits from the perception among many Democrats that he has the best chance to win back white voters who flipped to Trump.

That popularity with African Americans has helped keep Biden at or near the lead in the race for months, while preventing candidates like Booker and Harris from making inroads in states like South Carolina. One recent poll gave Biden a 17-point lead over his closest rivals in the state, propelled by the support of about 40% of black voters.

Even left wing activists who prefer other candidates acknowledge Biden’s advantage will be difficult to overcome.

“Like many black homes in America, my parents’ home has an Obama shrine,” said Tamika Gadsden, a South Carolina-based activist who likes Warren and Castro but whose parents side solidly with Biden.

If Biden falters in predominantly white states that vote earlier, there’s no guarantee that black voters will desert him — or that their support would automatically go to the race’s black candidates. And the white candidates positioning themselves as moderate alternatives to Biden, like Buttigieg and Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, have posted dismal numbers with nonwhite voters.

Likewise, the candidates vying for the progressive lane, Warren and Sanders, still face heavy skepticism among the older black voters.

“It’s still early,” said Rep. Karen Bass of California, the head of the Congressional Black Caucus, “I don’t take the top four as the fait accompli.”

Warren, of course, would be barrier-breaking in her own right as the first woman to be president, as would Buttigieg, an openly gay man. Both have risen to the top tier of early-state and national polls, and both are flush with cash from a largely white donor network that has assured them of long-term viability.

Together, Sanders, Warren, Biden and Buttigieg have $90 million in cash on hand. Harris, Booker, Castro, Andrew Yang, the Asian American entrepreneur, and Tulsi Gabbard, the American Samoan congresswoman, have about $24 million combined.

Booker and Castro have, in recent weeks, had to make desperate hat-in-hand pleas for money just to stay in the race, and both received online boosts from prominent black and Latino politicians including Stacey Abrams of Georgia and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, who alluded to the importance of racial representation.

The race could quickly change before voting begins in February. Harris has more money in the bank, and more endorsements from the Congressional Black Caucus, than Biden. Castro has not qualified for the November debate, but Booker and Harris have — and will have more opportunities to catch fire before the Iowa caucuses, which will reshape all expectations in a single night.

Conversely, while none of the leading white candidates have proved they can forge a multiracial coalition, they still have time to make inroads. Warren has gained good will from black and Latino progressives for infusing her policy proposals with planks about racial equity. Sanders has a vast and diverse donor base, and recently won endorsements from three of the country’s most prominent minority lawmakers, Ocasio-Cortez and Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan.

Harris, Castro, and Booker are inhibited in part because they came up through the Democratic establishment, and have faced criticism for legislative records that are viewed as out of step with the ascendant progressive wing.

Castro, in response, has tried to remake himself as a progressive champion, and even disavowed some of the deportation actions of Obama’s administration, in which he served. Harris and Booker have tried to toe a more careful line, in hopes they can win more moderate black voters should Biden falter.

Booker has been attacked for his closeness to big donors and mixed police reform record as mayor of Newark, New Jersey. Harris’ lack of clarity on policy has drawn fire, both from left-wing activists upset with her record as a prosecutor and centrists annoyed that she backed left-wing ideas such as the Green New Deal.

Because of this, some black and Latino Democrats push back on the idea that it’s racism or assumptions about electability that have hindered Booker, Harris and Castro. Privately they claim that some nonwhite Democrats who decided not to run, such as Abrams of Georgia or Andrew Gillum of Florida, would have been stronger candidates.

“It boils down to the candidates themselves,” said Rep. Filemon Vela of Texas. “Those structural barriers existed when President Obama ran.”

Vela, for his part, is backing Biden, convinced that he’s best suited to defeat Trump.

But he thinks a woman of color should be on the ticket and he has one in mind: Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada.

This article originally appeared in

In Racially Diverse Field, the Top Tier Is All White

When the Democratic primary contest began last winter, it featured the most racially diverse field in history, with two black senators, a Latino former Cabinet secretary, an Asian-American businessman and the first American Samoan elected to Congress. But 10 months later, the Democratic field has a top tier of four white candidates, three of them men.

But when Harris swept into Detroit to address an NAACP banquet Sunday night, she added something new. After her signature windup of “let’s speak truth,” she replaced her usual recitation of Democratic policies with an attack on President Donald Trump, accusing him of enabling bigotry and divisiveness and refusing “to call neo-Nazi violence what it is: domestic terrorism.”

“This president isn’t trying to make America great,” she said, “he’s trying to make America hate.”

With that, Harris was nodding to a political truth: She is attempting to reset her campaign after stagnating in Democratic primary polls, using her strengths as a prosecutor — which were on display during a recent face-off with Attorney General William Barr — to mount a sharp indictment of Trump.

Harris entered the 2020 race in January seeking to make history as the first black female president, and drew 20,000 people to her campaign kickoff in Oakland and a burst of donations that helped her emerge as the No. 2 fundraiser in the Democratic field through March. But from the start, she has found herself in a political vise, squeezed by competing factions in her party and even in her own campaign, which has led to some stumbles.

Harris is under pressure from liberal activists who are pushing Democrats toward newer, bolder horizons. She has repeatedly sought to placate the left since setting her sights on the presidency — an impulse many in her orbit say is reinforced by her campaign chair, Maya Harris, her sister.

At the same time, other Harris advisers and allies have winced at some of the senator’s overtures to liberals, such as calling for eliminating private health insurance and refusing to rule out letting prisoners vote, two comments she later modified. These supporters believe her pool of attainable voters sits squarely between center and left, and that she need not always offer the answer liberal activists may want from her.

These tensions, along with Harris’ instinct for caution, have slowed her candidacy. After initially focusing on a sweeping tax proposal aimed at lifting the poor and middle-class, she has turned to a teacher pay increase. Plans floated among her advisers earlier this year for a series of policy speeches and an embrace of free trade that could contrast her with progressive rivals like Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have not come to fruition.

But two recent events — Harris’ insistent questioning of Barr at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing last week, and Joe Biden’s multiday spat with Trump — have been clarifying moments for Harris and her aides, demonstrating the value of elevating her voice of opposition to the president and seeking direct confrontation with the White House, according to her advisers. Her campaign is also drawing on internal polling of early nominating states showing that Democratic primary voters are consumed with defeating Trump.

Now, with Biden rising in some polls since entering the race and, for the moment, claiming some of the African American voters she covets, Harris is recalibrating.

She capitalized on her interrogation of Barr, which went viral and was viewed online more than 5 million times, with a round of cable TV interviews and new investments in Facebook advertising. She lashed Barr as well as Trump again in her remarks to the NAACP Sunday. And on Monday, after reading from an anti-bullying book to a classroom of Michigan schoolchildren, she said the message was instructive for the current occupant of the Oval Office.

“Let me tell you how much our president can learn from a fourth grader!” she said to laughter. “The president of the United States of America has a profound amount of power that comes with that microphone and bully pulpit. And we can no longer have a president that uses that microphone to divide.”

Harris sidestepped a question from The New York Times about her pivot toward Trump — “I’m running against President Trump because I think he should not be president,” she said — but her spokeswoman said the senator is eager to “prosecute the case’’ against Trump, invoking a phrase Harris has used intermittently.

“Going forward she is actively going to do that,” said Lily Adams, the spokeswoman.

Adversaries and allies alike are already paying attention.

Trump said on Fox News that she has “got a little bit of a nasty wit,” one of two times in a week he called her “nasty.” And by the time she arrived in Detroit, her exchange with Barr was preceding her.

“Don’t try to cover up because Kamala will sure enough make you choke up,” said the Rev. Wendell Anthony, the head of the Detroit NAACP, who introduced Harris Sunday.

Michelle Keeble, a Detroit teacher, said she trusted Harris because of the candidate’s new rallying cry against Trump. “The Democrats’ agendas are pretty similar, so show me how you’ll bring people together,” Keeble said.

Todd Rutherford, the South Carolina House minority leader, called Harris’ focus on Trump “a sound approach because that’s what people are interested in.” He added: “Be yourself because that’ll carry you further than trying to out-left the left.”

But political advice is more easily offered than followed in a presidential race, and Harris, Maya Harris and other advisers are hearing progressive voices that are just as forceful.

Harris has carefully navigated the currents of her party since she was first elected district attorney in San Francisco, avoiding confrontations with the left that could slow her ascent while keeping enough distance from her hometown’s famously liberal politics to retain her future viability.

Maya Harris, a former executive at the ACLU, has deep ties to the left and has sought to tamp down criticism from outside allies while also courting them.

In one instance, she called ACLU officials after the publication of a critical op-ed written by a staff lawyer — who is a transgender man — about Kamala Harris’ record on LGBTQ issues while she served as California attorney general.

In early April, Maya Harris organized a private meeting between the senator and several prominent voices in criminal justice advocacy, after consulting Michelle Alexander, the prominent civil rights author and a longtime friend of the family.

According to several people familiar with the discussions, Maya Harris has asked advice on how to deal with the campaign’s “messaging problem” among the party’s left, and with black activists in particular.

Last week, Kamala Harris and her sister met with DeRay Mckesson and Samuel Sinyangwe, two leading criminal justice activists who were co-founders of Campaign Zero, the group advocating police reform that was born out of the Black Lives Matter movement. Mckesson said the purpose of the meeting was to push the campaign to embrace a bolder vision of criminal justice reform.

Cliff Albright, a co-founder of Black Voters Matter Fund, said that despite recent overtures from Harris’ presidential campaign, she still has a “credibility gap” with the progressive community.

“Trust has to be built,” Albright said. “And she has to build and it has to be through substantive policy, and use policies that us activists have built. She doesn’t have to reinvent the wheel — she has to look to the organizing community that has been doing that work.”

This lobbying campaign from liberals is part of the reason Harris has embraced some controversial policies her Democratic rivals were championing, like “Medicare for All” and the impeachment of Trump; avoided taking a firm position on others when asked, such as prisoners’ voting rights and reparations for the descendants of enslaved black Americans; and eased away from hard-line elements of her California record, like prosecuting parents for truancy.

But such pressure is coming up against the advice of three top Harris consultants — Ace Smith, Sean Clegg and David Binder — who have extensively polled and run focus groups on the Democratic primary electorate and do not believe she should bow to activists. A recent survey of voters in early states and a handful of Super Tuesday states tested potentially negative aspects of her record as district attorney and state attorney general and found they did little damage to her standing, according to two officials briefed on the findings.

The three strategists have clashed with Maya Harris since the campaign got underway over whether to mollify the left, according to two Democratic officials familiar with the internal debate. The senator’s sister has been more eager to find common ground with liberal groups when possible, both to develop allies and to mitigate criticism.

“Maya has spent years working on these issues and has long-standing and deep relationships in this field,” said Rashad Robinson, executive director of Color of Change, a political advocacy group. He said Maya Harris played a similar role during Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, serving as a connector between activists and the candidate. He has met with the Harrises twice since April. “Advocates know her and they know she has shared values.”

In a statement, Maya Harris did not dispute that there were differences in the campaign, but suggested she was hardly opposed to spotlighting her sister’s law enforcement record.

“Her career as a prosecutor makes her uniquely suited to take on a president who, frankly, doesn’t respect the law,” she said. “And it’s not just that she was a prosecutor — it’s that she’s a prosecutor who fought for justice, and equality her whole career and will as president.”

Kamala Harris’ tentativeness can be traced back to her history as a pathbreaking woman attempting to satisfy divergent constituencies, first in her ever-fractious city and then statewide. She has been whipsawed since she ran for district attorney against the death penalty and was then intensely criticized, including by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, for not reversing course after a police officer was murdered shortly after she was sworn in.

But even some of her admirers say she needs to better grasp the nuances of this primary and the pragmatic nature of her would-be supporters who just want to eject Trump from the Oval Office.

“You’re not going to get to the left of Senator Sanders and nobody should try,” said Sue Dvorsky, a former Iowa Democratic chair.

Bonnie Malak, a teacher who saw Harris in Detroit, said that she plans to vote for Harris, but has been put off by the repeated clarifying, particularly on the question of voting rights for incarcerated persons.

“Did she not do her research?” Malak said. “That would seem like something she would not need to research.”

Harris’ allies note that she has overcome challenges in each of her past campaigns. But to do so on this stage, where the scrutiny is exacting and risk is required, she may have to anger or at least disappoint some factions of her party.

Confronting Trump, however, is unlikely to turn off any Democrat.

Yolanda King, a 44-year-old Detroit teacher who saw Harris speak Monday, said that as a black woman, she particularly likes it when Harris targets Trump.

“I’m not going to lie, it feels good when it’s someone who looks like me,” King said. “It feels like I’m looking in a mirror.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/08/us/politics/kamala-harris-2020-trump.html" id="7a3c67ee-fc0e-3c52-ad34-435aae3a7a6b">The New York Times</a>.

Kamala Harris Is Trying to Reset Her Campaign by Taking On Trump

DETROIT — Sen. Kamala Harris of California structures her stump speech around two themes — “truth” and “justice” — meant to evoke her career as a barrier-breaking prosecutor and cultivate a reputation as a fearless public advocate.

But if many on the left see a power grab underway in this state and a similar one in Wisconsin, Michigan’s incoming Democratic governor sees something more: political possibility.

“This gamesmanship will keep voters and activists active through the 2020 election,” said Gretchen Whitmer, who takes office Jan. 1. Referring to Republicans, she added, “They’re thinking short-term.”

The ongoing legislative maneuvers in Michigan and Wisconsin are part of a broader war for power in the Midwest, a politically prized region for both parties — but especially for Republicans, who are trying to dilute Democratic control ahead of bigger battles. The GOP, which lost the House in November as well as four key governorships in the Midwest, depends on its gerrymandered districts in the region for a trove of seats in both Congress and state legislatures. Without these safe seats, they would be unlikely to attempt such last-minute tactics.

But now, with incoming Democratic governors set to have veto power over the next round of redistricting following the 2020 census, a handful of states are confronting either court challenges to the existing districts or new, more equitable rules for drawing the next decade of legislative boundaries. In Michigan, voters this year approved an independent redistricting commission, but Republican lawmakers are using the current lame duck session to try to curb the new Democratic secretary of state’s implementation of it.

The Republican efforts could hurt the party’s image with moderate voters in a region that President Donald Trump considers crucial for his 2020 re-election effort, and where his standing has fallen in suburbs that he would need to carry again to win. Yet GOP leaders are determined to push ahead, fearing that their decadelong dominance in the Midwest is coming to an end as newly elected Democrats and the prospect of more competitive districts threaten to shift the balance of power.

Republicans remain poised to keep control of some of the region’s state legislatures and many of their congressional seats in the coming years — the continued clustering of Democratic votes in urban areas ensures a baseline of conservative strength elsewhere. But their efforts to limit executive branch authority in Michigan and Wisconsin may only exacerbate voter anger at a political class that faces little accountability because of the safe seats they fashioned for themselves.

“These are not arcane process issues,” said David Axelrod, a Democratic strategist. “This goes to a fundamental defiance of the will of voters, essentially thumbing your nose at voters.”

In Wisconsin, Republican state legislators are using a lame duck session to limit the authority of the new Democratic governor, Tony Evers, and Democratic attorney general, Josh Kaul, while also expanding legislative authority and cutting back on early voting in the state. In Michigan, Republican lawmakers are attempting to dilute the power of Whitmer and the new Democratic attorney general and secretary of state, Dana Nessel and Jocelyn Benson, while also attempting to water down ballot measures voters passed last month that would expand voting access and create an independent redistricting commission.

Republicans control both chambers of the Legislature in the two states and will continue to do so next year.

“The root of this is that the clock is ticking, and you get it done now or it’s going to be hard in some of those states with a Democratic governor,” said Nick Everhart, an Ohio-based Republican strategist, noting that legislators may not be so eager to consolidate power when they or their successors are representing more competitive districts in the next decade. “Who wants to take those votes in a potentially different world in ’21 or ’22?”

The more fundamental risk for Republicans is that voters are increasingly savvy about issues like gerrymandering, voting rights and campaign finance, which were once thought to be of great interest to elites but of little relevance to most citizens. Those are some of the issues at stake in the GOP bills under consideration this month.

Many voters have become more supportive of a nonpartisan approach to redistricting, following years of gerrymanders that carved up states into impregnable red and blue districts and led to more political polarization rather than cooperation. Four states last month approved ballot measures that would create some form of an independent redistricting commission.

Some leading Republicans believe their party is tempting an even greater backlash than they saw in 2018 if they defy the wishes of an electorate increasingly attuned to fairness and angered by what figures as different as Trump and Sen. Bernie Sanders have denounced as “a rigged system.”

Frank LaRose, a Republican and Ohio’s newly elected secretary of state, called it “tough love for the party, but it’s what the voters are starting to expect and demand from us.” A former state senator, LaRose recalled that when he first began advocating for redistricting reform seven years ago, “folks’ eyes would roll back in their head, but it’s becoming more of a mainstream issue and it’s not just the League of Women Voters crowd or political science students.”

Or, as the Pennsylvania attorney general, Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, put it: “The people are driving the change.”

In Wisconsin, Michigan and Ohio, federal judges may also drive change. There are pending cases from each of the three states challenging their existing gerrymandered maps, whether congressional, state legislative or both. And even if the cases are all thrown out, Michigan and Ohio will still likely have more balanced district lines in the next decade: Voters in each state this year overhauled their redistricting process to ensure more fairly drawn seats.

“There’s no incentive for bipartisan cooperation at this juncture,” said Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., noting that Statehouse Republicans can ram bills through on a party-line basis. “But I could see that changing dramatically in the next decade, to all of our benefit.”

Midwestern Republicans do not deny that they could face a more balanced political map, upending the dominance they have enjoyed since the 2010 election. Yet an uncertain future is not reason enough to restrain themselves now, said Robin Vos, speaker of the Wisconsin Assembly and one of the architects of the lame duck intervention, noting that the first election under the new maps will not be until 2022.

“That’s four years away,” said Vos, a Republican, adding that he expected Evers, the governor-elect, to reject whatever map they fashion. “I would be surprised if he did not veto what we do,” he said.

Running candidates in districts crafted entirely by Republicans in 2011, Wisconsin Democrats this year won 53 percent of the vote in state Assembly races but captured only 36 percent of the seats (and they gained only a single seat).

But Vos pointed out that Republicans have won state Assembly majorities with court-drawn maps in recent decades and argued they could do so again.

The reason for the GOP’s dominance, said Lori Wortz, a longtime Michigan Republican strategist, is that Democrats are increasingly strong in high-density areas but continue to lose support in more rural localities — a divide that all but ensures a number of safe Republican seats no matter how legislative maps are carved.

“Republican votes tend to be more spread out and Democratic votes tend to be more concentrated,” said Wortz. “Whether the lines are drawn by this commission, the Legislature or the courts, they’ll come up with similar results.”

But it’s the voters in between urban and rural areas who pose the most peril to Republicans: The Trump-era drift of suburban voters away from the GOP not only threatens his own re-election, it also jeopardizes his party’s grip on statehouse power. And, Democrats say, Republicans are only compounding their difficulties in these fast-growing, largely college-educated communities by grasping for ways to retain power, whether it is gerrymandering, limiting voting access or trying to pass bills at the eleventh hour to shift authority away from the executive branch.

“It’s the only way they can try to continue to be competitive,” said Terry McAuliffe, the former Virginia governor who helped run a redistricting-oriented Democratic group this year, noting his party’s gains with the growing parts of the electorate. “But it’s why people hate politics and politicians.”

And Evers, in an interview Saturday, echoed his fellow governor-elect in Michigan, suggesting Republicans would pay a price for their lame duck tactics.

“People have had it with hyperpartisan behavior,” he said, nodding to his defeat of Gov. Scott Walker, the Republican who led Wisconsin for the last eight years. “That’s what I ran on.”

In Michigan, Democrats are confronting not just gerrymandered maps and diminished strength in rural areas, but also the state’s term limits law, which forces lawmakers out after three terms in the House and two in the Senate.

Democrats believe the constant turnover only emboldens Republicans, because many of the lawmakers will not personally face voters in the next campaign cycle.

“The way the system works, there’s little we can do about it,” said Jim Ananich, the Democratic minority leader in the Senate.

Whitmer said she and outgoing Gov. Rick Snyder, an often-pragmatic Republican, have had “broad” discussions about the bills limiting the power of incoming Democrats. She said she remains hopeful — but not confident — he will defy members of his own party and reject them. The two have met weekly since the election.

“It’s my hope that he lives up to his rhetoric in regards to civility and respect for the institution,” she said.

But for progressive activists, the legislative maneuvering in Lansing and in Madison, Wisconsin’s capital, has been instructive.

Daniel Squadron, a former New York state senator who leads a liberal group focused on taking back statehouses, said the lame duck sessions illustrate the lingering cost of the Democrats’ inattention to state and local politics

But Squadron was more hopeful about the lessons of the last few weeks — and what it could portend for Democrats if they are able to compete in statehouse races in the years to come.

“The way to change politics in people’s lives is to change state legislatures,” he said. “Oh, and by the way, you’ll also change voting rights and gerrymandering along the way.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/10/us/politics/michigan-wisconsin-republicans-midwest.html" id="90d4bfd5-8c70-357b-a635-2a5a05e33662">The New York Times</a>.

Behind GOP Power Play in Midwest: Fear of Losing a Gerrymandered Advantage

LANSING, Mich. — When Michigan Republicans began moving legislation last week to limit the power of newly elected Democratic officials, some liberal activists shouted “shame!” through the Capitol rotunda while others trailed legislators with boom microphones, livestreaming their interactions online to make them uncomfortable.

The continuing legislative maneuvers in Michigan and Wisconsin are part of a broader war for power in the Midwest, a politically prized region for both parties — but especially for Republicans, who are trying to dilute Democratic control ahead of bigger battles. The GOP, which lost the House in November as well as four key governorships in the Midwest, depends on its gerrymandered districts in the region for a trove of seats in Congress and state legislatures. Without these safe seats, they would be unlikely to attempt such last-minute tactics.

Frank LaRose, a Republican and Ohio’s newly elected secretary of state, called it “tough love for the party, but it’s what the voters are starting to expect and demand from us.” A former state senator, LaRose recalled that when he began advocating for redistricting reform seven years ago, “folks’ eyes would roll back in their head, but it’s becoming more of a mainstream issue and it’s not just the League of Women Voters crowd or political science students.”

In Wisconsin, Michigan and Ohio, federal judges may also drive change. There are pending cases from each of the three states challenging their existing gerrymandered maps, whether congressional, state legislative or both. And even if the cases are all thrown out, Michigan, Missouri and Ohio will still likely have more balanced district lines in the next decade: Voters in each state this year overhauled their redistricting process to ensure more fairly drawn seats.

Running candidates in districts crafted entirely by Republicans in 2011, Wisconsin Democrats this year won 53 percent of the vote in state Assembly races but only captured 36 percent of the seats (and they only gained a single seat).

“Republican votes tend to be more spread out and Democratic votes tend to be more concentrated,” Wortz said. “Whether the lines are drawn by this commission, the Legislature or the courts, they’ll come up with similar results.”

“People have had it with hyperpartisan behavior,” he said, nodding to his defeat of Gov. Scott Walker, the Republican who led Wisconsin for the past eight years. “That’s what I ran on.”

(STORY CAN END HERE. OPTIONAL MATERIAL FOLLOWS.)

Daniel Squadron, a former New York state senator who leads a liberal group focused on taking back statehouses, said the lame duck sessions illustrate the lingering cost of the Democrats’ inattention to state and local politics.

But Squadron was more hopeful about the lessons of the past few weeks — and what it could portend for Democrats if they are able to compete in statehouse races in the years to come.

With Power Grabs in the Midwest, GOP Risks a 2020 Backlash

Harris sidestepped a question from The New York Times about her pivot toward attacking Trump — “I’m running against President Trump because I think he should not be president,” she said — but her spokeswoman said the senator is eager to “prosecute the case’’ against Trump, invoking a phrase Harris has used intermittently.

This article originally appeared in <a id="7a3c67ee-fc0e-3c52-ad34-435aae3a7a6b" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/08/us/politics/kamala-harris-2020-trump.html">The New York Times</a>.

Kamala Harris is trying to reset her campaign by taking on Trump

“If you think that’s a good idea, go to ElizabethWarren.com,” she told about 500 people at a town hall-style event in Memphis, adding: “Pitch in 5 bucks, do whatever you can.”

The next morning she woke up to some news about a surge in small-dollar contributions, but it wasn’t for her: Former Rep. Beto O’Rourke had raised $6.1 million in the first 24 hours of his candidacy.

It was another blow to a candidate who has spent the first months of the Democratic presidential primary campaign seeking to distinguish herself from the field: She was the first major candidate to announce; she has set the pace on policy, unveiling a series of far-reaching proposals on child care, taxes and the role of large technology companies; and she defied the pleas of her longtime finance director and declared that she would stop pursuing big donations altogether, leading to his resignation.

But as the first fundraising deadline arrived at midnight Sunday, Warren — who last year was widely considered a would-be front-runner — found herself in a political vise. Her rivals on either ideological flank will have raised substantially more money in the first quarter than she did, and her focus on policy has not yet translated in the polls.

Warren’s early troubles reflect the broader challenges confronting the vast Democratic field, all vying for money and attention as they seek to dethrone President Donald Trump. Harvesting online donations does not come easily to noncelebrity candidates, and the party’s long-standing fascination with youthful charisma — along with its current, Trump-driven fixation on electability — can outweigh qualities like experience or policy expertise.

The decision of Sen. Bernie Sanders, Warren’s longtime friend and fellow populist, to run again has cut into her money and her potential share of the vote on the left. And Democrats like O’Rourke, Sen. Kamala Harris and Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, have offered a party eager to find fresh faces a handful from which to choose.

“If Warren says, ‘I can’t raise enough money, so my way to win is through an aggressive field operation because I have fired-up volunteers,’ well, Bernie and Beto can say, ‘OK, well, we can do both,’” said Rufus Gifford, the finance director in former President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign.

Warren has also faced persistent questions about her electability from Democratic voters desperate to oust Trump. These concerns grew when she released the results of a DNA test last year showing she had distant Native American ancestry, and was immediately ridiculed by Trump.

Her staff is sensitive enough about the “but can she win” concerns that last week it issued a lengthy campaign memo, in the guise of a fundraising email, detailing her platform and résumé while offering a reminder that she is the only candidate who in recent years has defeated a statewide Republican incumbent.

In an interview Thursday at the Washington office of one her consultants, Warren began making her electability case more explicit, invoking her 7 1/2-half-point defeat of Scott Brown seven years ago.

“It’s what people said in Massachusetts in 2012,” she recalled about a race in which she also lagged in early polls, adding triumphantly, “I’ve started out down and I’ve come back and fought and fought and fought until, I didn’t squeak by, I beat him and beat him hard.”

Warren has good reason to remain optimistic — or at least not to panic just yet. Even if she struggles to raise money in the early going, she can finance her ambitious campaign thanks to the $10 million aides say she has transferred from her Senate campaign account.

And the contours of the 2020 race are nothing if not uncertain. Warren does not face the sort of unease within factions of the party that Sanders and former Vice President Joe Biden do, and presidential history is littered with examples of candidates who surged late when other contenders unraveled.

However, the history of Democratic primaries is also filled with would-be reformers who fell short because they chiefly appealed to white voters — and that is who dominates Warren’s audiences, even in a heavily black city like Memphis.

“It was noticeable,” said Jennings Bernard, a longtime pastor and political activist, who attended Warren’s event here. “The concerns of the people in this audience are not the concerns of this community.”

In the interview, Warren offered little explanation for why her policy-filled, 43-stops-and-counting campaign has not inspired a groundswell of small-donor support or gotten her more traction in early polling.

“Good ideas are sustaining over time,” she said hopefully.

While she is an unmistakably fierce competitor, Warren is most animated discussing her progressive policy vision. In separate interviews, two of her friends said without prompting that she did not crave the presidency as some other candidates do and would be content if her agenda prevailed but she lost the nomination.

Asked if she would be happy with such an outcome, Warren answered quickly, “I’d be a lot happier than I would be if none of those ideas made it into law,” before returning to safer ground by arguing that “it’s going to take somebody fighting for those changes.”

While she betrayed no irritation about Sanders’ decision to run again, or the media attention and money that less-experienced candidates like O’Rourke and Buttigieg have drawn — “it’s 11 months out,” she noted, referring to the first primary voting — some of her admirers are more forthcoming.

“It’s a little frustrating to see some candidates coming in — whether Beto or whoever — and start getting a lot of attention when they do not have the same résumé of other candidates,” said Kathy Sullivan, a former New Hampshire Democratic chairwoman who has not yet endorsed in the race. Making clear that her exasperation was on behalf of some of the female candidates, Sullivan added, “But there’s nothing new about that, we’ve always had to do it backward and in heels.”

Other Democrats worry about what they describe as the political version of post-traumatic stress disorder following Hillary Clinton’s stunning loss. Questions of viability, party officials say, have become overwhelming to the point that activists are uncertain about following their instincts out of fear they will nominate someone who will lose to Trump.

“We’re so traumatized by 2016 that we’re afraid to trust our hearts and that’s turning us all into pundits,” said Adam Jentleson, a longtime Senate Democratic aide who supports Warren. “Overthinking and voting for a candidate we like less but who we think other people will like more is the path to ending up with a candidate no one likes very much.”

Trump, who has long relished taunting Warren with the “Pocahontas” slur, has already declared victory. In an interview on Fox News last week, Trump said, “I hit her too hard, too early and now it looks like she’s finished.”

Part of Warren’s challenge owes to timing — she is not the new candidate on the scene the way she would have been four years ago, when progressives lobbied for her to challenge Clinton.

“There were artificially high expectations early on because there was so much interest in her in 2016,” said Jennifer Palmieri, a top aide to Clinton in the last race. “Everybody loves you when you’re the one who’s not in the race, and once you get in you’re a mortal and have to slog it out. That doesn’t mean you can’t come back and win — it’s just a different type of race.”

Warren’s most immediate challenge, though, may be money. She raised only $299,000 in the first day of her candidacy, far below the $5.9 million and $6.1 million Sanders and O’Rourke brought in for the same period and also less than Harris. In emails to supporters, asking for as little as $3, her campaign flatly says her rivals will post “fundraising figures we won’t be able to match.”

And after demonstrating little capacity to raise cash online, Warren effectively doubled down on small-dollar contributions, announcing in February that she would no longer hold big-money fundraisers or seek wealthy donors to bundle hundreds of thousands of dollars in checks.

She cast it as a decision long in the making that will offer her more time with voters. In truth, she made the choice only after a robust debate inside her campaign that led to the resignation of her finance director, Michael Pratt, who strenuously objected to the idea.

At a Valentine’s Day meeting at Warren’s Washington condominium that began with a heart-shaped cake but soon grew heated, Pratt noted that campaigns often collapse when they run out of money and pleaded with her not to cut off a significant cash stream, according to Democrats briefed on the conversation. He pointed out that winning over wealthy fundraisers across the country helped build networks that could translate into political support, not just checks.

But Pratt lost the argument to two of Warren’s closest advisers, Dan Geldon and Joe Rospars, who made the case about standing apart from the field and freeing up her schedule.

Pratt is not the only veteran adviser absent from this campaign. Among the others who are not involved are Mindy Myers, who ran the winning Senate race against Brown in 2012 and became chief of staff; pollster Tom Kiley; and two ad makers, Mandy Grunwald and Marla Romash. (Kiley retired and Grunwald has another client in the race, Sen. Amy Klobuchar).

Warren chose not to air the ads Grunwald and Romash made for her Senate re-election last year, determining that she was better off husbanding her resources than trying to establish herself with New Hampshire voters who live in the Boston media market. That saved her much of the cash she has since transferred to her presidential campaign, but it has also left her lagging in early New Hampshire polls.

Those polls may not mean much if her fundraising gamble pays off and she can emerge later this year, after a series of nationally televised debates and dozens more events like the one in Memphis.

Wilnelia Rivera, a Boston political strategist who helped orchestrate Rep. Ayanna Pressley’s primary victory in 2018, said that while a grassroots strategy was often derided, she believed Warren could alter the way presidential campaigns are run if she becomes the nominee.

“They’re up to something,” Rivera said of Warren’s campaign. “What that is? I have no idea. But we’re paying a lot of attention. Because she’s doing something that’s innovative.”

This article originally appeared in <a id="7f26c5a3-5389-4b14-b2f5-d36438012ea0" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/31/us/politics/elizabeth-warren-fundraising.html">The New York Times</a>.

MEMPHIS, Tenn. — On a Sunday afternoon last month, Sen. Elizabeth Warren began a swing through the South by proclaiming that she was running “a different type of campaign” — one that did not include high-dollar fundraisers but was entirely reliant on grassroots contributions.

The peril in Warren's fundraising gamble

<h1>WASHINGTON — The commemoration of Martin Luther King’s Birthday on Monday became a day of confession, invective and promise for prominent Democrats, who used events across the country honoring the slain civil rights leader to try to inoculate themselves from criticism, lash out at President Donald Trump as a racist and, in one case, begin a history-making run for the White House.</h1>

From the nation’s capital to the South Carolina Statehouse to the Rev. Al Sharpton’s storefront headquarters in Harlem, the gatherings were solemn, spirited and reflected the fraught nature of what would have been the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s 90th year.

They also reflected the political imperative of reaching out to black voters who are a crucial part of the Democratic coalition and are increasingly demanding accountability on race from their own leaders.

Taking the podium at a breakfast in Washington, former Vice President Joe Biden, who was first elected to public office the year after King’s assassination, acknowledged that more was expected of him at this moment.

Biden said he regretted supporting the tough-on-crime drug legislation of the 1980s and 1990s, expressing remorse in particular over a bill that created different legal standards for powdered cocaine and street crack cocaine.

“It was a big mistake that was made,” Biden said of the measure, which was criticized as disproportionately affecting black Americans. “We were told by the experts that ‘crack, you never go back,’ that the two were somehow fundamentally different. It’s not. But it’s trapped an entire generation.”

The King Day celebration began on a note of hope and history when Sen. Kamala Harris of California declared her presidential candidacy.

“We know that we’ve not yet reached those ideals, but our strength is that we fight to reach those ideals,” Harris said of King’s aspirations.

The daughter of immigrants from Jamaica and India, Harris is perhaps the most formidable black woman to ever seek the presidency.

Trump, joined by Vice President Mike Pence, made a surprise appearance at the monument to King in Washington. The president laid a wreath at the memorial but only stayed briefly and said nothing about the man being honored.

This article originally appeared in <a id="9f2ab769-22b7-4254-9c30-bfa0d35a5473" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/21/us/politics/biden-crime-bill-regrets.html">The New York Times</a>.

Democratic Hopefuls Summon King's Legacy While Shaping Their Own