Democrats are hurting their election chances because of the slogan

Violence against the Law: How the New York State Police Charged a Democrat after the 2008 General Reionization Voting Referendum

Kennedy’s re-election bid is far from competitive. Gary Chambers is a community activist from Baton Rouge, a Democratic opponent. And, in this instance, the Democrat in question really has endorsed the idea of cutting police budgets.

That wasn’t the unusual part. In Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and other states, Republicans have painted Democrats as hostile to the police and as cheerleaders for rioting and mayhem. And even though the data on crime is mixed, the tactic seems to be working for the G.O.P. in many races.

Clinton had a political consultant, Paul Begala, who worked with him in the White House. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his. CNN has more opinion on it.

In New York State last year, Republican candidates focused more on crime than usual. The subject was changed by the Democratic candidates. After the election, Adams said that those who had stated not to talk about crime was an insult to Black and brown communities. Nancy Pelosi told The Times’s Maureen Dowd that Democrats might have maintained control of the House of Representatives if the party’s candidates in New York had taken crime more seriously.

Tuberville told the people at the A Trump rally in Nevada that Democrats want crime because they want to take over. They would like to control what you have. He added that Democrats “want reparations” for Black Americans whose ancestors were enslaved people “because they think the people that do the crime are owed that.”

Innocence vs. Crime: The Case for Rep. Cortez Masto, Attorney General Adam Laxalt, and Sen. Val Demings

My friend was the one who said Tommy Tuberville has the ability to go to hell. Tubserra made millions of dollars from the efforts of Black athletes as a college football coach. It’s reprehensible that a former college coach who got rich because of black players risking life and limb on the football field wouldn’t tolerate such discrimination.

The Democrats have the facts on crime to back them up. Democrats now have to move from defense to offense on the issue. What they now need is the courage to believe they can wrest from Republicans an issue that the GOP has long – and falsely – claimed as its own.

A great example is Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nevada). Cortez Masto – arguably the most endangered Democrat in the Senate – who is locked in a neck-and-neck race with Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt. Prior to Laxalt, Cortez Masto worked as an attorney general and federal prosecutor. Her husband is a former law enforcement officer and she is running ads touting her support from law enforcement. She has even earned the support of the Republican police chief of Reno.

When Laxalt became AG, he called her a role model, and while he was running for attorney general he said she had done an excellent job. Will her tough-on crime credentials allow her to return to the Senate? I don’t know. But if she weren’t leaning in on crime, this race might already be over.

Rep. Val Demings (D-FL) is another Democrat who is unafraid of the crime issue. When you go to her campaign website, just below the standard “Donate Here” plea, there is a photo of Demings in a police uniform.

Demings was the first female police chief in Florida and spent 27 years in that uniform. In one campaign ad, she strides purposefully across the screen, as if walking the beat, as images of her in uniform are projected behind her.

The candidate spoke about protecting Florida from bad ideas when she spoke about her record in the Senate. That’s just crazy.” She concluded by saying that it was time to send a cop to the Senate.

A few days ago, a poll put the senator at a five point deficit to Demings, but he is either taking no chances or panicking. He accused Demings of supporting a “radical left agenda” which included turning boys into girls. (Fact check: WESH-TV in Orlando labeled Rubio’s claim “False.”)

The election races of bothCortez Masto and Demings are too close to call. Democrats are being shown how to handle crime by both women standing strong against it.

It is true that the crime rate is down from the 1990s and that people feel a little uneasy, but it is also true that it has been increasing, according to Mark Levine. “Democrats have to be able to talk about that and offer real solutions.”

It turns out that in 2020, the murder rates in the states Trump carried were 40% higher per capita than in the states Biden won. Eight of the ten states with the highest per capita murder rates voted for Republican candidates in presidential elections this century. Sen. Tuberville’s sweet home Alabama is number four, exceeded in murder rate by only Mississippi, Louisiana, and Kentucky.

New York City mayor Eric Adams: The role of the right wing and the media in the democrats’ battle for power in the U.S. House

Democratic officials and strategists in New York tell CNN they are bracing for what could be stunning losses in the governor’s race and in contests for as many as four US House seats largely in the suburbs.

Democrats watching the races closely are pointing at New York City Mayor Eric Adams as someone who played into the right wing narratives in ways that may have helped set the party up for disaster on Tuesday.

“He was an essential validator in the city to make their attacks seem more legit and less partisan,” said one Democratic operative working on campaigns in New York, who asked not to be named so as not to compromise current clients.

Other Democrats argue this has it backwards. They think candidates would be in better shape if they spoke to the fear and frustration voters feel and not the other way around.

The Democrats are worried about a backlash from the problem of crime, with swing voters turned off by Kathy Hochul, and base Democrats discouraged by talk of awful things.

Rep. Lee Zeldin, Hochul’s GOP opponent, has taken to regularly invoking Adams on the campaign trail, to the point that some Democratic operatives have grimly joked that Zeldin could just run clips of Adams talking about crime as his closing ads.

There are national ripples: Democratic groups like the Democratic Governors Association are moving in millions of dollars to prop up Hochul in a deep-blue state instead of spending that on tight races elsewhere, with Vice President Kamala Harris flying in on Thursday in one of her own last campaign stops and President Joe Biden heading to Westchester County, north of New York City, on Sunday to rally with the governor. Republicans are targeting seats that Democrats have been counting on, in order to pad a potential majority in the House.

Adams and Hochul are in a rough patch in the last weeks of the race and Adams recently appeared at an official government event with Hochul to announce she would give state money to pay for overtime for police at her campaign stop in Queens. Adams blamed the media for sensationalizing the crime problem.

Rep. Kathleen Rice, a retiring moderate Democrat from just outside New York City and a former Nassau County district attorney, said at first she was encouraged by Adams. As a former police officer, he understands the problem, she said, but “the general consensus is that he hasn’t shown he has focused on the issue enough for it to have made a difference.”

Rice said she has heard from people in the outside of the city who are not happy with the news about Adams spending late night at pricey private restaurants while murders are happening on the subways.

Rice’s seat is one of two Democratic-held seats on Long Island now seen at risk. One seat north of New York City is currently held by Pat Ryan and the Lower Hudson Valley seat is currently occupied by Sean Patrick Maloney.

It’s an issue for voters, but not because they have personally experienced crime in the Hudson Valley or their neighbors do, but because the narrative pushed by the industrial fear machine at Fox and the New York Post describes New York City as a place of crime. It’s raising concerns among suburbanites.

Months ago, Maloney warned other House Democrats, in conversations and in a March memo sent around by the DCCC and obtained by CNN, to be ready to respond and rebut attacks for being weak on crime. The guidance started with telling candidates to be firmly against calls to “defund the police” but also to talk about the more than $8 billion Democratic lawmakers had secured for law enforcement in bills such as the American Rescue Plan.

Maloney pointed to his votes for legislation to fund programs for body cameras and plate reading technology for local police departments in his district, as well as for the gun control measures enacted over the summer.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/04/politics/eric-adams-new-york-crime-midterms/index.html

Eric Adams, the Rock on which he could build a church: a conversation about the bail laws and the midterms of New York

He stood by a remark that he made in July of last year, when he stood with Adams and called him a rock on which he could build a church.

I meant he had a genuine passion for justice and fairness in the system, and he was respectful of good policing and understanding the need for public safety. “He may not get everything right, and it may not be everything I would do. He knows that we are not where we should be. And I support his efforts to clean it up.”

New York’s debate over the bail laws and internal political power struggles between officials are bound up in conversations about crime. In phone calls and meetings at the beginning of the year, Adams urged top officials in Albany to change the laws, warning them that crime would likely be a major political liability in the fall, according to people familiar with the conversations.

Legislative leaders have already passed two partial rollbacks, including one supported by Hochul earlier this year. But they have resisted doing more, despite warnings from suburban members.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/04/politics/eric-adams-new-york-crime-midterms/index.html

The Rise of Crime in New York City During the Biden Term: The Story of Mayor David Adams and the New York Police Department at High Crime Rates

Adams has charged that the “insane broken system” of bail laws now puts criminals back on the street who then tend to get back to committing crimes. The New York Police Department says that in the first half of this year, there were 891 people arrested at least three times for theft and 211 people were arrested at least three times for breakin. The mayor’s office also pointed to statistics that show double-digit jumps in recidivism for felony, grand larceny and auto theft.

What appears in political ads do not tell as much about crime statistics as what is found in crime statistics. Suburban counties are reporting safer streets and communities – a report in February by the Westchester County executive from just north of New York City, for example, showed a 26.5 percent drop in its crime index.

Murders and gunfire are down in the city from last year, but rape, robbery and felony assault levels are all up in New York, according to NYPD data.

“A lot of the story that’s being told is of New York City crime,” said Democrat Bridget Fleming, a former prosecutor who’s been endorsed by police unions in the House race for much of the area Zeldin currently represents on Long Island. We are keeping crime down here because we are making sure law enforcement is supported.

The spokesman said the mayor does not put a rosy spin on things in a way that will benefit any of the other candidates.

Young said that they couldn’t ignore the reality. People who claim we aren’t making progress or that we’ve been crying wolf aren’t paying attention and don’t know what they’re talking about.

He said that it was important to convince people that you are worthy to lead by following their lead and meeting their pressing needs. The mayor is not going to abandon people in high-crime areas now that he is mayor.

Adriano Espaillat points out that many systemic issues, as well as larger societal and economic issues are involved in making a real impact on crime and that Adams has only been on the job for 10 months.

Biden had his own bromance with Adams, from hosting him in the White House weeks after he won his mayoral primary to offering him half of his peanut butter-and-jelly sandwich as they rode together in the limo in February during a presidential visit to New York to talk about gun violence. White House chief of staff Ron Klain praised Adams for tapping into the same coalition of pragmatic, working-class and African American voters, which won Biden the 2020 Democratic nomination.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/04/politics/eric-adams-new-york-crime-midterms/index.html

New York City is a crime-busting city: A message to educate the public about the state of the art and the future of gun safety

There are some places in the country where gun safety laws are weak and crime is high. We needed to tell that story and done so loudly to neutralize the issue. You can’t sit idly by and wish it away,” said Charlie Kelly, a political adviser to former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s gun safety group Everytown and former executive director for the Democratic-aligned House Majority PAC.

In New York and beyond, some Democrats are already hoping for a post-election recognition and realignment that pushes their party both toward a tougher attack on Republicans and a more forceful deflection of their own left flank.

Brannan is from a moderate district in Brooklyn and is a New York City councilman. “It’s another thing to be a Republican, to say, ‘If you go outside, you’re going to die.’”

Progressives don’t have a great response. The statistics do not support a suggestion that the crime increase is mostly a right-wing talking point. Voters seem to agree with the statistics.

Eric Adams won the mayor’s race in New York City by focusing his campaign on crime. In the Democratic primary, he lost only one of the city’s five boroughs: Manhattan, the wealthiest.

Republicans also fared well last year in Oregon, where the largest city — Portland — has become a symbol of post-pandemic disorder. Between 2019 and 2022, murders nearly tripled, vandalism incidents nearly doubled and car thefts rose 69 percent.

Karen Bass, the recently elected mayor of Los Angeles, has developed the most progressive message on crime. Bass defeated a more conservative candidate not by downplaying crime concerns but by talking about them frequently, he was a former community organizers who was in the house for 12 years. She was a victim of the crime last year.

She has tried to strike a balance by calling for both the hiring of hundreds of additional police officers and tougher punishments for abusive officers. “We must stop crimes in progress and hold people accountable,” she said in her inaugural address. The social, health and the economic conditions that compromise a safe environment can be prevented by addressing them.

The next test will be if a message on crime can win in a city that is overwhelmingly Democratic. As was the case in Los Angeles, the more progressive candidate — Johnson — is Black, while the more conservative one — Vallas — is white.

In the past, Johnson supported calls to defund the police but he has tried to avoid the subject during the mayoral campaign. He has instead emphasized his plans to build more housing, expand pre-K and increase funding for social services. Vallas is likely to be portrayed as being out of touch with Chicago. The local police union’s top official is a supporter of Donald Trump.

“No matter where you live, no matter what you look like, you deserve to have a better, stronger, safer Chicago,” Johnson said at his election night party last night.