Can progressives win over the large numbers of black and brown voters they say will benefit most from their policies?
It’s a provocative question that a lot of Democrats find themselves asking after seeing the early results of New York City’s mayoral primaries last week.
In a contest focused on crime and public safety, Eric Adams, who emerged as the leading Democrat, focused his message on denouncing progressive slogans and policies that he called the lives of “black and brown children”. threatened and were being pushed to “a lot of young, white, affluent people.” A retired police captain and Brooklyn borough president, he dismissed calls to discredit the police department and promised to expand his reach in the city.
Black and brown voters in Brooklyn and the Bronx flocked to his candidacy, rewarding Mr. Adams with a wide margin in areas ranging from Eastchester to eastern New York. Although the official winner may not be known for weeks due to the city’s new rank-choice voting system, Mr Adams holds a commanding edge in the race that will be difficult for his rivals to overcome.
His appeal adds to evidence of an emerging trend in Democratic politics: a disconnect between progressive activists and rank-and-file Black and Latino voters, who he says benefit most from his agenda. As liberal activists orient their policies to combat white supremacy and call for racial justice, progressives are finding that many voters of color think about issues quite differently.
“Black people tend to talk about politics in a more practical and everyday context,” said Hakeem Jefferson, assistant professor of political science at Stanford University, who studies the political views of black people. to those who are distrustful, it matters more to those who are in the middle.”
He continued: “The average black voter is not the AOC and is actually closer to Eric Adams.”
In the 2016 Democratic presidential primary race, Senator Bernie Sanders struggled to win over voters of color. Four years later, black voters helped elevate President Biden to victory in the Democratic primary, forming the backbone of a coalition that helped him defeat liberal rivals including Sanders and Senator Elizabeth Warren.
In the general election, Donald J. Trump made gains with non-White voters, especially Latinos, as Democrats saw a decline in support, which according to him cost the party key congressional seats. a post-election autopsy by democratic interest groups. In the 2020 election, Mr. Trump made a bigger gain among all black and Latino voters than white voters without college degrees, according to Democratic data firm Catalyst.
On issues beyond criminal justice, data indicates that black and Latino voters are less likely to be liberal than white voters. An analysis analysis by Gallup found that the share of white Democrats who identified as liberal had increased by 20 percentage points since the early 2000s. During the same period, the polling firm found a nine-point increase in liberal identity among Latino Democrats and an eight-point increase among Black Democrats.
As the votes were being tabled in New York, Mr. Adams sought to capitalize on that tension between progressive and more liberal voters, basing himself on the future of Democratic politics and his campaign as a template for the party. Presented.
“I am the face of the new Democratic Party,” he said at his first press conference since primary night. “If the Democratic Party fails to recognize what we did here in New York, they will have problems with the midterm elections and they are going to have problems with the presidential elections.”
Separating national trends from New York’s silly politics is like ordering a bagel with a skimmer in Des Moines. You’ll probably get a slice of bread, but the similarities end there.
Liberal activists argue that he has made significant successes among non-white voters in recent years, pointing to Mr Sanders’ gains among Latinos and young voters of color during his two presidential bids. Progressive congressional candidates, like members of the so-called squad, have won several heavily Democratic House districts with meaningful support from non-white voters.
And of course, black and Latino voters, like any other demographic group, are hardly a monolith. Younger voters and those with college degrees are more likely to trend left than their older parents.
Still, the traction that some more conservative Democratic candidates like Mr. Adams have gained in Black and Latino communities threatens to undermine a central tenet of the party’s political thinking for decades: Demographics as Destiny.
For years, Democrats have argued that as the country became more diverse and more urban, their party would be able to secure a near-permanent majority with a growing coalition of voters of color. By changing that premise, Democrats can win without needing to appeal to affluent suburbanites, who have traditionally been more liberal on fiscal issues, or white working-class voters who hold more conservative views on race and immigration.
But a growing body of evidence indicates that large numbers of black and Latino voters may take a more centrist approach on the very issues—race and criminal justice—that progressives believed would rally voters of color in their favor.
New York Mayor Primary provided a particularly interesting test case of that kind of thinking. As crime and gun violence increased in New York, polls showed that crime and public safety were the most important issues for voters in the mayoral race.
The limited public polling available showed a nuanced opinion among voters of color on the police. a Manhattan Institute Voting, a conservative think tank, found that only 17 percent of black voters and 18 percent of Latinos wanted to reduce the number of police officers in their neighborhoods. But 62 percent of black voters and 49 percent of Latino voters said they supported “defending” the New York Police Department and spending money on social workers instead, the survey found.
other surveys found that black and Latino voters were more likely than white voters to say that the number of uniformed police officers in subways should be increased and that they felt vulnerable to crime in their neighborhoods. Fears of violent crime prompted some politicians to reject efforts to discredit police in predominantly black neighborhoods.
Progressive activists backing Maya Willey, one of the more liberal candidates in the race, accused Mr Adams of being “intimidated” by the rising crime rate in the city.
“A false dichotomy between justice and public safety was offered to voters by Adams’ rhetoric,” said Sochi Nnemeca, New York state director of the Working Families Party. “We worked hard to dismantle that framework, but the real fear of people with dog whistles is when our roads are becoming unsafe. It’s a very human experience.”
Yet Mr. Adams’ personal history may be particularly appealing to voters with complex views on criminal justice. A former police officer, he built his political brand on criticizing the police, speaking out against police brutality and, later, the department’s stop-and-frisk strategy. After years in New York politics, he is a member of the party establishment, enjoying the benefits of name recognition and decades-long relationships with community leaders.
It is the kind of biographical narrative that voters are more likely to have intimate personal experiences with the police, who live in neighborhoods where there may be more crime but where people are more likely to face violence or abuse from officers.
Some scholars and strategists argue that black and Latino voters are more likely to focus their political beliefs on those types of experiences in their lives, taking a pragmatic approach to politics that is less in ideology and historical distrust of government and More in capacity. To fulfill the broad promises of politicians.
“These standard ways of thinking about ideology tend to fall apart for black Americans,” Dr. Jefferson said. “The idea of liberalism and conservatism just goes sideways.”
“It’s not just the language that black people are using to organize their politics,” he said.
Nate Cohn contributed reporting.