Saturday, March 06, 2021

On Politics: DeSantis Is Ascendant, and Cuomo Is Faltering

Both men's fortunes and their parties' views of them seem disconnected from how they have governed.
Author Headshot

By Lisa Lerer

Politics Newsletter Writer

Hi. Welcome to On Politics, your wrap-up of the week in national politics. I'm Lisa Lerer, your host.

Joe Raedle/Getty Images; Hans Pennink, via Associated Press

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida is a darling of the right-wing media, a staunch Trump conservative trying to position himself as the heir to the former president's political brand. Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York is a descendant of a liberal political dynasty, a Trump antagonist with his own, long-simmering presidential ambitions.

Both have been on the front lines of the government's response to the coronavirus pandemic. But recent twists in their political fortunes underscore how differently both parties are keeping score in this volatile moment. Democrats and Republicans aren't just on different teams in this pandemic — they're playing by different rules altogether.

Less than a year ago, Mr. Cuomo was a Democratic darling, heralded for his handling of the virus in a state that was hit hard by the pandemic. Celebrities declared themselves "Cuomosexuals," his daily briefings became must-see TV and political wags murmured about a presidential bid. The International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences awarded him an Emmy for his 111 "masterful" coronavirus briefings. He published a memoir about his leadership, taking a victory lap with the race far from over.

There were no such accolades for Mr. DeSantis. Referred to as "DeathSantis" and mocked for allowing "Florida Morons" to pack state beaches, Mr. DeSantis faced national scorn for his resistance to shutdowns. Last fall, he lifted all restrictions, keeping schools open for in-person learning and forbidding local officials from shutting down businesses or fining people for not wearing masks.

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"I see, in many parts of our country, a sad state of affairs: schools closed, businesses shuttered and lives destroyed," Mr. DeSantis said, offering a rousing defense of his pandemic response at the opening of Florida's legislative session this week. "While so many other states kept locking people down, Florida lifted people up."

The same could be said about Mr. DeSantis's political ambitions.

For Republicans, loyalty to the former president and his pet issues has become the ultimate litmus test. Mr. DeSantis checked all the boxes: fighting with the media, questioning scientific experts, embracing baseless claims of election fraud and railing against liberals.

Conservatives rewarded the governor for his fealty. His approval rating rose above water in recent weeks, with some polling of Republicans showing Mr. DeSantis with higher ratings than Mr. Trump. He finished first in a straw poll at the Conservative Political Action Conference last weekend covering a field of potential presidential candidates that did not include Mr. Trump, fueling chatter about a 2024 bid.

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The Democratic Party has embraced a very different kind of political standard, one based not on allegiance to President Biden but on ideological and cultural purity. Throughout the Trump era, Democrats equated politics with morality as a way to attack a Republican president who trafficked in racist and sexist attacks. They cast themselves as the party of #MeToo accountability, pressuring those in their ranks accused of sexual misconduct to step down.

That's left Democrats facing charges of hypocrisy when it comes to Mr. Cuomo, who is now accused of sexually harassing several younger women. While Mr. Cuomo has few defenders, many powerful New York Democrats, including Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, are pushing for an independent investigation rather than an immediate resignation. The allegations have left his party divided between those who believe he must leave office and others who worry that the party is eating its own by cleaving to a standard Republicans largely ignore.

It doesn't help that before this current scandal, Mr. Cuomo was already under investigation for allegedly manipulating statistics on deaths of nursing home residents during the pandemic — chipping away at his image as a masterful manager of the virus and the Democratic brand of good governance. Once sailing toward a fourth term as governor, Mr. Cuomo is now fighting for his political career. His approval ratings have fallen nearly 30 points from last May.

Yet, for both men, their political fortunes and the tests imposed by their parties seem disconnected from the central question of this moment: Did they effectively govern their states through an extraordinarily challenging year?

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The data is fairly inconclusive. When adjusted for population, Florida has a lower rate of deaths than New York, including at long-term care facilities like nursing homes, but a higher rate of cases over all, and it leads the country in the number of cases of the more contagious and deadlier U.K. variant of the virus. Slightly more Floridians — 8.7 percent of the population — than New Yorkers have received two doses of a Covid vaccine, but nearly the same percentage of the population in both states has received the first dose.

Of course, numbers don't tell the whole story. New York was the epicenter of the country's first wave, before doctors had the equipment, experience and medications to fight a new disease. States like Florida learned from New York. Yet for all Mr. Cuomo's efforts to use his platform to stop the spread of the disease, he resisted early calls for lockdowns — a delay that undeniably played a role in the high death toll.

About a year into the pandemic, Mr. Cuomo has fallen from his perch as a liberal icon. Mr. DeSantis has ascended to conservative stardom. And New Yorkers and Floridians are still mourning, masking and waiting for brighter days.

Drop us a line!

Over the past year, life has changed in ways big and small. We're curious how the virus affected your political views. Maybe you went from MAGA-head to Bernie bro? Found a new love of big government after decades of worrying about the debt? Or even a new set of QAnon friends?

Let us know how the virus changed your political opinions and you could be featured in a future edition of On Politics. As usual, please include your full name and where you live. We'd love to hear from you!

Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com or send me a message at @llerer.

23 candidates enter a House special election in Dallas.

Ruru Kuo

Filing closed this week in the race for a suburban Dallas congressional district, which became vacant upon the death of Representative Ron Wright, a Republican who was hospitalized with the coronavirus in January.

Twenty-three candidates — 11 Republicans, 10 Democrats, a Libertarian and an independent "constitutionalist" — filed for the May 1 special election. The crowded race reflects a sense of political uncertainty, as both parties jockey for their future in the Lone Star State.

While Republicans fended off efforts to flip the state in November, Democrats still believe Texas is trending in their direction. The contest in the Sixth Congressional District, which includes the Dallas suburbs and more rural counties, will offer early clues as to whether suburban voters keep trending Democratic without Mr. Trump on the ticket.

Local Republican leaders have coalesced behind Susan Wright, a party activist who is the widow of the congressman. Other Republican candidates include former Trump officials, politicians who've lost primaries in the district before and Dan Rodimer, a former professional wrestler who ran for Congress last year in Nevada.

"I have six children and I want them to be raised in a constitutional-friendly state," said Mr. Rodimer, filing his paperwork an hour before the deadline.

Democratic candidates include Jana Lynne Sanchez, the 2018 party nominee for the seat; Lydia Bean, a Democratic nominee in 2020; and local community leaders.

The contest is an all-party election. If no candidate clears 50 percent of the vote, the top two finishers will head to a runoff — a race that could pit two candidates from the same party against each other.

… Seriously

Dr. Anthony Fauci has his 3-D model of the virus. I have leggings and an empty Netflix queue.

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Friday, March 05, 2021

On Politics: What’s in a Vote-a-Rama?

Senate Democrats are racing to pass Biden's stimulus bill. That doesn't mean things are moving fast.
Illustration by The New York Times

Maybe it's just a simple matter of physics: The bigger and more hulking the thing is, the heavier and harder it is to move.

Or maybe it's just a matter of the Senate, where moving any legislation at all can often feel like a World's Strongest Man competition.

Either way, Democratic leaders in the chamber are not exactly coasting along as they push to get President Biden's $1.9 trillion stimulus bill passed on a party-line vote. First there was the fight over the Fight for 15: Democrats were forced last week to let go of a key provision that would raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, after the Senate parliamentarian ruled it didn't belong in a bill passed through the budgetary reconciliation process — which Democrats are using to avoid a Republican filibuster.

Then last night, the Senate remained in session past 2 a.m. after Senator Ron Johnson, a conservative Republican from Wisconsin, demanded that the bill be read in full. And all day today, Democrats held a so-called vote-a-rama, considering dozens of amendments in a test of the party's unity, one vote at a time.

Our Washington reporter Emily Cochrane has been The Times's boots on the ground throughout the process, and she took a moment out of a whirlwind afternoon to help catch us up on where things stand.

First off, what the heck is a vote-a-rama? Is it as fun as it sounds?

A spectacle only arcane Senate rules could create. And yes, it's actually called that.

Essentially, it's a rapid-fire series of amendments that ends only when 100 senators agree that they would rather sleep than force politically fraught votes on one another. Democrats have chosen a fast-track process — known as reconciliation — to pass the stimulus plan, which allows them to craft and pass the bill with a simple majority and avoid Republican opposition and the Senate filibuster. The vote-a-rama is a chance for Republicans — or whoever happens to be in the minority — to register complaints and force votes on tough issues that can be grist for political attack ads.

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It ends when senators stop offering amendments, and this is a legislative body with impressive stamina.

There are still a few sticking points as Democrats vote their way through the pieces of this bill. The unemployment benefit extension has pitted some moderates and liberals against one another. Also, some senators have insisted on a vote for the $15 minimum wage, though the parliamentarian has ruled out including it in this bill. What key points of contention are Democrats still working through?

Right now, as of 4:37 p.m., the whole process has ground to a halt because there is not unanimous Democratic agreement over the unemployment insurance provisions. One moderate, Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, appears to have signaled that he does not yet support the Democratic compromise for providing a weekly supplemental benefit through Oct. 4, and Democrats cannot afford to lose a single vote on any issue with Republicans expected to be united against the bill.

There could also be additional issues with state and local funding amendments. But we won't know until they start voting.

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Senator Ron Johnson insisted yesterday that the entire bill be read on the Senate floor. That kept the chamber in session well into the wee hours of this morning, and it amounted to a strident demonstration of the G.O.P.'s unified opposition to this bill. The legislation is widely popular with the public, so why is the Republican caucus so firmly against it?

With job numbers slowly improving and vaccinations increasing across the country, Republicans have argued that the bill is too costly and is not directly targeted to the pandemic. They have singled out specific provisions as overreaching and say that the bill is designed to satisfy a longtime wish list of Democratic priorities, instead of addressing the pandemic recovery. And some Republicans are betting that, similar to the Obama stimulus during the Great Recession, voters will soon grow disillusioned with so much spending and federal overreach.

It's looking as if this will be another late night in the Senate. By the time tomorrow morning rolls around, where do you think we'll be? And what are the major steps that need to be taken before it can land on President Biden's desk?

Define morning. I mean, when I got to the Capitol at about 9:15 this morning, I was hearing estimates of the vote-a-rama ending anywhere between 2 and 5 a.m. — and that was before they kept an amendment vote open for more than five hours in order to haggle over the terms of the unemployment provision.

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There will be a vote on final passage at the end of the vote-a-rama. Once this gets through — again, who knows when that will be — it will need to be passed by the House for a second time because there have been some significant changes, including removing the minimum wage increase and changing the income threshold for direct payments. Then it heads to the president's desk.

   

One of the former impeachment managers sues Trump over the Capitol attack.

By Nicholas Fandos

A House Democrat who unsuccessfully prosecuted Donald Trump at his impeachment trial last month sued him in federal court on Friday for acts of terrorism and incitement to riot, attempting to use the justice system to punish the former president for his role in the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol.

The suit, brought by Representative Eric Swalwell, Democrat of California, accuses Trump and key allies of inciting the deadly attack and conspiring with rioters to try to prevent Congress from formalizing President Biden's election victory. And like the case laid out in the Senate, which acquitted Trump, it meticulously traces his monthslong campaign to undermine confidence in the 2020 election and then overturn its results.

"The horrific events of Jan. 6 were a direct and foreseeable consequence of the defendants' unlawful actions," asserts the civil suit, filed for Swalwell in Federal District Court in Washington. "As such, the defendants are responsible for the injury and destruction that followed."

Though not a criminal case, the suit charges Trump and his allies with several counts, including conspiracy to violate civil rights, negligence, incitement to riot, disorderly conduct, terrorism and inflicting serious emotional distress — findings that could severely tarnish his legacy and political standing. If found liable, Trump could be subject to compensatory and punitive damages; if the case proceeds, it might also lead to an open-ended discovery process that could turn up information about his conduct and communications that eluded impeachment prosecutors.

In addition to the former president, the suit also names as defendants his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., his lawyer Rudolph Giuliani and Representative Mo Brooks, Republican of Alabama, who led the effort to overturn Trump's election defeat when Congress met on Jan. 6 to formalize the results. All three men joined Trump in promoting and speaking at a rally in Washington that day, which Swalwell says lit the match for the violence that followed.

A majority of the Senate, including seven Republicans, voted to find Trump "guilty" based on the same factual record last month, but the vote fell short of the two-thirds needed to convict him. Even Republicans who voted to acquit him, like Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, concluded that Trump was culpable for the assault. Many Republicans argued that the Senate simply lacked jurisdiction to punish a president no longer in office, and said the courts were the proper venue for those seeking to hold him accountable.

The lawsuit adds to Trump's mounting legal woes. Another Democratic congressman, Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, has already filed suit on similar grounds in recent weeks with the N.A.A.C.P. Prosecutors in New York have active investigations into his financial dealings, and in Georgia prosecutors are investigating his attempts to pressure election officials to reverse his loss.

In a statement, Jason Miller, an adviser to Trump, blasted Swalwell as a "a lowlife with no credibility" but did not comment on the merits of the case. Brooks rejected the claims, saying he would wear Swalwell's "scurrilous and malicious lawsuit like a badge of courage."

Giuliani and a lawyer for Donald Trump Jr. did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Both Thompson's suit and Swalwell's rely on civil rights law tracing to the 19th century Ku Klux Klan Act, but their aims appear to differ. The earlier suit targets Trump's association with right-wing extremist groups, naming several groups as defendants and explicitly detailing racialized hate it claims figured in the attack. Swalwell focuses more narrowly on the alleged scheme by Trump and his inner circle.

During the Senate trial, Trump's defense lawyers flatly denied that he was responsible for the assault and made broad assertions that he was protected by the First Amendment when he urged supporters gathered on Jan. 6 to "fight like hell" to "stop the steal" that he said was underway at the Capitol.

This piece comes from our live briefing, where you can find more updates on the news in Washington today.

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