Vivian Wang

The proposal from the chairman, Jay Jacobs, would quintuple the number of votes that a political party needs to guarantee a spot on the ballot in the next election. A party currently needs 50,000 votes for its candidate for governor to secure a spot for the next four years.

Jacobs, in a private email to a group of state commissioners reviewing parts of New York election law, proposed raising the number to roughly 250,000.

At first glance, it might seem a strange position for any Democrat, let alone the head of the state’s Democratic Party, to take.

Nearly every minor party has fallen short of collecting 250,000 votes, including, and perhaps especially, the Working Families Party, a progressive group that shares many Democratic Party ideals yet has been one of the most reliable antagonists of Jacobs and his close ally Cuomo.

Only the Conservative Party has been able to surpass the 250,000-vote mark in recent years. If just that party survived, a candidate could then run on both the Conservative and Republican lines — New York election law allows candidates to run on multiple lines — while a liberal candidate would have no such advantage.

“Conservatives have an awful lot of support,” Jacobs said when asked about the idea. “There’s no question that they will have an easier time meeting these thresholds.

“I can see that that could be problematic,” he added.

Jacobs, whom Cuomo appointed to the state commission, insisted that his proposal was aimed at reducing voter confusion and rooting out corruption among “sham” parties that he said trade their ballot lines for political favors. He did not specify which parties he was referring to.

“A lot of people have been getting away with an awful lot for a long time,” Jacobs said. “In my mind, it will be better overall if elections are run with only really credible parties.”

For the WFP and its supporters, the proposal is the latest attempt by Jacobs and Cuomo to silence one of their most prominent political rivals. For the past few months, Jacobs has all but declared war on third parties, advancing multiple proposals to ban them. Cuomo, though he has not explicitly sought to ban the WFP, has said that he knew Jacobs’ stance when he chose him for the commission.

The dispute is also the most recent front in the feud between Cuomo and an increasingly emboldened mass of left-wing activists and politicians who have cast Cuomo and his allies as centrists bent on obstruction.

Jacobs made the proposal in an email Oct. 16, soon after a meeting of the commission. It was created by the Legislature in April to design a small-donor matching system for state elections, but in the months since, much to the angst of the WFP, the commission also turned to the question of third parties.

In the email, Jacobs asked a lawyer for the group, as well as the other eight commissioners, whether it had the power to raise the threshold for a guaranteed ballot line.

Traditionally, the WFP and other minor parties had been able to meet the 50,000-vote threshold relatively easily, in part because candidates are allowed to run on multiple lines, known as fusion voting. Progressives can, for example, choose to vote for the Democratic candidate on the WFP line to send a message about their political priorities without worrying about wasting a vote.

Jacobs asked the lawyer if the commission could require parties to achieve “an amount equal to 2% of all registered voters in the state” in races for president and governor.

Two percent of New York’s 12,695,762 registered voters is 253,915 votes. In the last election for governor, the Conservative Party collected 253,624 votes. The WFP, the next highest vote-getter, collected about 114,000.

Jacobs said the details of the proposal were not final. He said he had not yet discussed it with his fellow commissioners, who must vote to approve it.

But he reaffirmed his commitment to a 250,000-vote benchmark, arguing that allowing too many parties — especially if the state were to adopt a public matching funds program — could spiral out of financial control.

The commission will make its recommendations in November. They will have the force of law unless they are changed by the Legislature within three weeks.

A 250,000-vote threshold — roughly 4% of turnout in the 2018 governor’s election or 6% of the 2014 turnout — would be almost unmatched in its difficulty, said Richard Winger, editor of Ballot Access News, a publication that covers laws affecting minor parties.

“It would be in the company of Alabama; I don’t think New York has considered that state a model,” Winger said. Alabama requires parties to collect a number of petitions equal to 3% of the last vote for governor.

Texas this year lowered its threshold from 5% of the vote in a statewide contest to 2%.

Jacobs also pointed to Virginia and New Jersey as states that require parties to win 10% of turnout in the last governor’s race. But independent candidates there can also qualify by collecting a certain number of petition signatures — in the case of New Jersey, just 100 signatures for a candidate for the House of Representatives.

That disparity has worried the WFP and other minor parties, even among those who acknowledge that 50,000 might be too low of a threshold. And it has fueled already-rampant speculation in certain quarters about Jacobs’ — and the governor’s — true intentions.

Some have accused Cuomo, through Jacobs, of seeking to undermine the WFP, even at the cost of fellow Democrats’ electoral victories, in order to maintain his grip on power in an increasingly blue Albany.

“I honestly have never understood why it is that, electorally, the governor cannot seem and act as interested as we are in having as many Democrats in the state Legislature as possible,” Sen. Jessica Ramos, a Democrat who won her seat with WFP support last year, said.

She acknowledged that it was Jacobs, not Cuomo, who put the proposal forward. But, she said, “there is no question that the two work very closely.”

Rich Azzopardi, a senior adviser to Cuomo, denied the connection. “Per usual, we don’t know what Sen. Ramos is talking about,” he said. “It’s not our proposal, but ultimately legislators would have the option to weigh in on what the commission ultimately decides.”

Cuomo’s long, tortured history with the WFP, which has consistently sought to nudge him to the left, has led to some unusual moments.

In 2014, Cuomo created a new third party, the Women’s Equality Party, that was widely seen as an attempt to draw voters away from its similarly initialed counterpart, the WFP.

Jacobs’ proposal would exclude the Women’s Equality Party as well — a prospect that Jacobs, in a rare divergence from Cuomo, seemed to welcome.

“The Women’s Equality Party, they just support Democrats,” he said Monday. “These are sham parties.”

Jacobs, asked if he had spoken to the governor about the proposal, parried.

“What I would only say is — this is not going to sound like the answer you want — but I never discuss what I discuss with the governor,” he said. “I wouldn’t assume that because I’m not answering it, it’s an answer you won’t like. It’s just, if I begin to say on the one hand one thing, and another time I don’t answer, it gives a different implication than I want.”

Still, he insisted on his independence: “What I do and what I say on this commission have nothing to do with anyone else’s views: not the governor, not anyone.”

This article originally appeared in

Democrats' Secret Plan to Kill Third Parties in New York

The chairman of the New York state Democratic Party is pushing a proposal that would essentially neuter almost all third parties, crippling one of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s biggest political nemeses but also potentially helping conservatives.

But that hasn’t stopped people — lots of them — from trying to unseat her.

So far, eight Republicans and three Democrats have filed to run for Ocasio-Cortez’s seat in the Bronx and Queens. Two of the Republicans have each raised more than $420,000, even though no Republican has represented the Bronx in Congress in at least 50 years.

The moonshot nature of these candidacies, and the fervor for them regardless — the candidates, in both parties, have made the rounds on Fox News and become darlings of conservative media — underscores the fame and rancor that have surrounded Ocasio-Cortez.

The campaigns also highlight a broader strategy by the Republican Party: turning voters’ resentment toward Ocasio-Cortez into a conduit for the party’s other electoral goals. By encouraging attacks on Ocasio-Cortez, Republicans hope to inspire a trickle-down effect onto lower-profile, but much more vulnerable, Democrats.

“When she’s forced to explain what she stands for and what she has pushed the Democratic Party to embrace from a policy standpoint, that is an electoral boon for Republicans,” said Michael McAdams, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee.

A spokesman for Ocasio-Cortez declined to comment.

The chances of an upset remain slim, despite the national attention to the race.

Ocasio-Cortez, with her social media savvy and outspoken advocacy for left-wing policies, has cultivated 5.5 million Twitter followers and a worshipful base of supporters who donated $1.4 million to her reelection bid between July and September alone. She has $1.91 million on hand.

Progressive candidates covet her political blessing; her decision to endorse Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., for president in Queens on Saturday was seen as a major victory for his campaign.

But for the challengers, running — even with a near-guarantee of defeat — has few downsides. They can raise thousands off Ocasio-Cortez’s name alone; earn exposure for future campaigns; and bask in the attention, even if only for a short time.

For her part, Ocasio-Cortez has used the swell of challengers as fundraising fodder.

In an email to supporters soon after the Republican candidates’ contribution numbers were reported, Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign announced an “emergency goal” of nearly $850,000 — the sum of the Republicans’ hauls — for October. If met, Ocasio-Cortez would be on track to raise more than $2.5 million in the next quarter.

By contrast, in New York’s 15th Congressional District, which borders Ocasio-Cortez’s, only one candidate has raised more than $400,000 in a quarter, even though the race is considered competitive: The incumbent, Rep. José Serrano, a Democrat, has announced his retirement.

It is unclear how much support the challengers to Ocasio-Cortez will receive from their party establishments. Traditionally, state and local parties back incumbents, but Ocasio-Cortez has rankled fellow Democrats with her and her supporters’ unabashed willingness to back primary challenges against longtime officeholders.

In a recent fundraising email, Ocasio-Cortez’s team wrote that ever since her victory, “corporate Democrats have been waiting for their chance to strike back.”

The Queens County Democratic Party — the longtime power base of former Rep. Joe Crowley, whom Ocasio-Cortez defeated — did not return a request for comment on Ocasio-Cortez’s primary challengers.

One of the Democratic challengers, Fernando Cabrera, a New York City councilman, said he consulted the Bronx County Democratic Party’s chairman, Assemblyman Marcos Crespo, before announcing his campaign.

“He said, ‘Go ahead and run,’ but I don’t take that as an endorsement,” Cabrera said. “We’re still in dialogue regarding support.”

Crespo, in an interview, said the county party traditionally supported incumbents. “I can’t envision why we would necessarily think differently about the 14th,” he said, referring to Ocasio-Cortez’s district.

On the Republican side, resources may also be scarce, even as party leaders plan to highlight the challengers. In an opinion piece in The Washington Examiner, a conservative outlet, one writer said the national party would be “insane” to put “one ounce of support” into the race, urging donors to focus on winnable districts instead.

McAdams, of the House Republicans’ campaign arm, said it was too early to say where the committee would focus its spending, but that the district would not be on its list of top targets. Still, he said the group was “constantly monitoring” the race.

Nick Langworthy, the chairman of the New York Republican Party, said he had not done any polling on Ocasio-Cortez’s district and had not recruited any of the candidates.

The 11 challengers to Ocasio-Cortez are mostly unknown, and many have no political experience. Some, after filing their candidacies, have raised no money.

But a few have clearly capitalized on conservatives’ fervent hatred of Ocasio-Cortez. John Cummings, a teacher and former police officer, announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination on “Fox &amp; Friends”; he raised $425,000 in 10 weeks, outpacing many sitting members of Congress.

Scherie Murray, a Republican businesswoman and Jamaican immigrant who voted twice for Barack Obama, gave her first interview to Sean Hannity, also on Fox. She raised $424,000, and has more than 140,000 Twitter followers.

Cabrera and another Democratic candidate, Badrun Khan, a self-described activist, have also appeared on Fox News.

The challengers, from both parties, share largely the same criticisms of Ocasio-Cortez. They slam her opposition to bringing an Amazon headquarters to New York City, blaming her for 25,000 lost jobs; they call her too radical to represent the district; and they accuse her of being too focused on building her national profile.

“Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez has done an excellent job establishing a national persona for herself,” Cummings said. “But most of the people who live in the district, even Democrats I’ve spoken to, feel that she’s just not concerned with what goes on here.”

At times, it can seem the candidates are running against Ocasio-Cortez more than they are running for any particular message.

In emails from Cummings’ campaign to reporters, the subject lines do not include his name, describing him only as “AOC opponent.” Murray, in the Twitter post announcing her candidacy, explained her decision succinctly: “There’s a crisis in Queens and it’s called AOC.”

A spokeswoman for Khan said in an email that Khan was not available for any phone interviews for almost a week. (Khan later sent written responses to a few questions.) “Her unusual situation — running against AOC — makes her more visible obviously than other candidates,” the spokeswoman wrote.

“I can state with certainty that this notoriety is not what Ms. Khan is looking for,” she added.

Of course, that sudden visibility, coupled with the low likelihood of success, has only fueled speculation of alternate motives.

Cabrera, who does not live in the district, is barred by term limits from seeking reelection to the City Council, and is rumored to want to run for Bronx borough president in 2021. Congressional candidates are not required to live in the district they represent.

“This is a way to establish relationships with funders, to try to craft a message,” Christina Greer, an associate professor of political science at Fordham University, said of the benefits of running against Ocasio-Cortez.

“This may be a failed mission, but it sets them up to be a known quantity.”

Cabrera denied that he was running to raise his profile. “This is really for the soul of America, and I just couldn’t stand by,” he said.

Of course, Ocasio-Cortez, who just turned 30 and had never run for office before, is prime evidence that conventional political wisdom and party support does not always matter on Election Day.

Langworthy said he could not think of another first-term member of Congress with such a high profile — and that her profile was drawing undue amounts of Republican attention.

“Especially when they see an outsider like AOC running and winning,” Langworthy said of the challengers, “they think, ‘Hey, maybe I can do that, too.’”

Ocasio-Cortez Is a Shoo-In, but 11 Other Hats Are in the Ring

NEW YORK — It is hard to imagine a scenario where Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez loses her seat next year. She has raised more than $3.4 million, is better known than some presidential candidates and handily won a district that is among the bluest in the nation.

Ocasio-Cortez Will Be Very Tough to Beat. Why Are 11 People Trying?

So she was shocked when state regulators afterward sent her a letter ordering her to register as a lobbyist.

New York state defines a lobbyist as, in part, someone who spends money to influence lawmakers. But Sullivan, a registered nurse, has argued that she was exercising her rights as a citizen.

She is now locked in a battle with the state’s ethics commission, which has warned that she could be guilty of a misdemeanor and fined more than $40,000 if she continues to refuse to register.

Sullivan’s case is unusual; few unpaid advocates spend more than $5,000 on an issue, the annual threshold for registering as a lobbyist in New York. Sullivan has said that she spent $14,000 on three billboards, plus about $2,000 on a website.

But the case illuminates a larger conundrum facing lawmakers across the country: Who counts as a lobbyist in the age of social media and renewed grassroots involvement, when it is easier than ever for people to make themselves heard?

New York revised its lobbying guidelines this year to explicitly include grassroots campaigns as well as meetings with officials, and to define when social media counts as lobbying. In California, lawmakers are weighing a proposal to increase regulation of online advertisements about legislation. On the federal level, where only direct contact with lawmakers must be reported, activists have pushed for disclosure of grassroots activity, too.

“Almost every jurisdiction I can think of is grappling at some level with how much is covered and at what threshold,” Beth Rotman, the director of the Money in Politics and Ethics program at Common Cause, a government reform group, said of social media and grassroots mobilization.

She called the quandary the “million-dollar question” for ethics officials.

“At a certain smaller threshold, these activities are not the same as paid lobbyists,” Rotman said. “The challenge becomes how we as a democracy track this when it becomes more than small dollar.”

The patchwork of lobbying laws across the country makes clear the challenge facing lawmakers. Federal law defines lobbyists by the percentage of time that they spend contacting lawmakers; New York defines them by money earned and spent. Other states have lower or higher thresholds, or exclude volunteers.

Sullivan’s activism stemmed from her experience as a student at the Emma Willard School in Troy, New York, where she says she was raped by a teacher in the 1990s, then forced out by administrators.

She did not speak publicly about her story until 2016. In response, the school commissioned a report that found numerous instances of abuse over the decades, including by a teacher, Scott Sargent, who was later fired for sexually abusing a student. That student was Sullivan.

The school settled with Sullivan, and Sullivan said she drew on those funds to pay for the billboards.

She rented them for one month last year to urge passage of the Child Victims Act, a proposal to extend the statute of limitations on child sexual abuse. The billboards — one in New York, near Sullivan’s former school, and one each in Massachusetts and Connecticut — criticized New York’s years of failure to pass the bill and directed observers to her website.

She also hired a pilot to fly over the state Capitol with a plane trailing a sign about the Child Victims Act.

Several months later, New York’s Joint Commission on Public Ethics, or JCOPE, sent Sullivan a letter noting her failure to register as a lobbyist, citing her spending. Registration involves paperwork and a $200 fee.

But Sullivan balked. She told regulators that because only one of the billboards had been in New York, and because it was digital — and therefore showed some images that did not mention the Child Victims Act — she had not exceeded $5,000.

She declined to say how much she believed she had spent. But, Sullivan said, even if she had reached the spending limit, she opposed being called a lobbyist.

She was representing only herself, not a client, she said. The state defines a lobbyist as someone “retained, employed or designated by any client to engage in lobbying.”

Nor did she stand to benefit financially from the Child Victims Act’s passage, as she had already settled her abuse allegations. (The bill failed last year but passed in January under the new Democratic-led state Legislature.)

“I just question how I, as a victim, am not able to say, ‘This is the best idea I’ve seen to be able to close these loopholes,’” Sullivan said.

“I am not the problem with corruption with New York state politics.”

The dispute escalated in July, when JCOPE sent Sullivan a letter warning that the panel could open a formal investigation and fine her for as much as three times more than she spent.

A JCOPE spokesman declined to comment on any possible investigations. But he said the law requires disclosure about how much people are spending to persuade lawmakers.

“We have procedures for handling potential unregistered lobbying and treat all people and entities allegedly involved in that unregistered lobbying the same way,” the spokesman, Walter McClure, said in a statement. “We will enforce the law and pursue the required disclosure.”

Still, ethics experts acknowledged the challenge of disentangling lobbying, activism and normal speech.

New York’s law leaves a loophole for individuals who spend copiously on a campaign without tying it to a specific bill or call to action, Rotman said. If Sullivan had not identified the Child Victims Act and only mentioned sexual abuse broadly, she would not have fallen under the state’s definition of lobbying.

New York’s law also does not account for stature. Sullivan compared her efforts to those by Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the leader of the Archdiocese of New York, which opposed the Child Victims Act for years. Dolan is not considered a lobbyist, but Sullivan said his influence far outweighed hers, even after she rented billboards. (The archdiocese also pays registered lobbyists.)

“They can just walk right into the Capitol and say, ‘I want to talk to Cuomo,’” she said of church leaders, referring to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo. “You can’t compete.”

But even relatively unknown activists can now shape public opinion in hard-to-measure ways, using social media.

Sullivan’s billboards earned stories in multiple news outlets, and she has also amplified her outrage on Facebook.

Still, even as modes of exerting influence have proliferated, regulators should be judicious with the label of lobbyist, said Susan Lerner, the director of Common Cause’s New York arm. Some experts have argued that overregulation strangles grassroots activism.

“There’s been a long tradition of Americans being concerned about lobbyists,” Lerner said. But “there is a history here of a distinction between a paid lobbyist and a passionate citizen. And our laws properly should reflect that.”

But Alex Camarda, the senior policy adviser at Reinvent Albany, a government watchdog group, said the state’s money threshold was an “imperfect” but reasonable standard.

And, he added, the label of lobbyist should not carry such a stigma, as lobbyists provide expertise and diverse perspectives to lawmakers.

“That’s part of the democratic process,” Camarda said, “even though it has a negative connotation in some circumstances.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/31/nyregion/lobbying-billboard-new-york.html" id="196ffa29-e250-345d-ae82-ed5a51aa23a7">The New York Times</a>.

Abuse Victim's 3 Billboards Called for Stronger Laws. Then the State Showed Up

When Kat Sullivan rented a billboard last year in upstate New York to call for stronger protections against child sex abusers, she believed she was engaging in the democratic process, using her own time and money to make her voice as an abuse survivor heard.

Eliot Engel leads the Foreign Affairs Committee, after first being elected to the House in 1988. Carolyn Maloney was the first woman to represent her district when she was elected in 1992. Yvette Clarke, serving since 2007, has delivered some of the most consistently progressive votes in her party.

All four New York House members are facing primary challenges from multiple insurgent candidates.

Almost a year before the June 2020 primary, more than a dozen Democrats in New York have declared their plans to run, forming one of the most contentious congressional fields in the country at this stage. They are targeting some of the country’s longest-serving or most powerful politicians — most as first-time or outsider candidates, and some in the same district.

The phenomenon is not unique: Progressives across the country are plotting primary battles, spurred on by the victories last year of figures such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, as well as growing disenchantment with the Democratic Party’s old-guard wing. Early challengers have emerged in blue states including New Jersey and California.

But they have taken on added significance in New York, which is quickly emerging as one of the country’s most high-profile — and potentially consequential — battlegrounds.

Nearly a third of New York’s Democratic delegation was elected more than 20 years ago. Yet over the past year, progressive unrest coupled with solidly blue demographics have vaulted a new crop of activists and officials to power.

Of the 10 House races in New York featuring the longest-serving Democrats, eight already have primary contenders.

One of Nadler’s three challengers raised more than $250,000 last quarter. One of Engel’s was endorsed by Justice Democrats, the progressive group that recruited Ocasio-Cortez. In Brooklyn, Adem Bunkeddeko, a 31-year-old Harvard graduate and son of Ugandan refugees, plans on Monday to launch a new campaign against Clarke, after losing to her by fewer than 1,100 votes last year.

But the insurgents’ mobilization has also met hardened institutional resistance.

Spooked incumbents have been shoring up their progressive credentials. The House Democratic campaign arm has vowed not to work with political consultants who work for primary challengers.

And history weighs heavily in favor of incumbents. Between 1999 and 2018, just 49 incumbents in the House of Representatives lost their primaries — a victory rate of almost 99%. Last year, only two Democratic incumbents lost their renomination bids.

As a result, next year’s primaries in New York are likely to be more than a show of how Ocasio-Cortez’s primary victory over former Rep. Joseph Crowley has reverberated through the party. They will also test who can replicate that victory, and under what conditions.

“AOC taught them that anything is possible,” Steve Israel, a retired congressman from Long Island, said of the challengers. “But theory runs into reality at a certain point in politics. And the reality is that there’s not a single Democratic incumbent who’s going to be caught unawares.”

One potential make-or-break factor is the involvement of Ocasio-Cortez herself, whose endorsement is highly coveted among progressive candidates. A spokesman for her declined to say whether she would get involved in congressional primaries.

But Justice Democrats, a grassroots group sometimes seen as a proxy of sorts for its most famous ally, has already leapt into action.

The group last month endorsed Jamaal Bowman, a middle school principal in the Bronx, against Engel. It is one of just four endorsements the group has made of insurgent candidates in House races, a backing that has already paid dividends for Bowman.

He raised about $75,000 last quarter. None of Engel’s three primary challengers last year had raised any money at this stage in the campaign.

“This is a whole different ballgame than last time,” Bowman said of Justice Democrats’ role in the coming elections.

“They were working with an unknown. They were operating in the shadows for the majority of the contest,” he said of the group’s backing of Ocasio-Cortez in 2018. “Now, they’re coming out guns blazing.”

Candidates without high-profile left-wing backing have made inroads as well. Lindsey Boylan, a former aide to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, has raised more than $250,000 for her challenge to Nadler — a remarkable sum for a first-time candidate. (Of that total, $56,000 is earmarked for a general election and cannot be used in the primary; dozens of her donors have also given the maximum amount of $2,800.)

Boylan has also lent $75,000 to her campaign and has hired Peter Daou, a former top aide to Hillary Clinton, as a senior adviser.

Still, the uphill battle is clear. Engel easily dispatched his challengers last year. One of his intended opponents in 2020 has already dropped out, citing the influx of other progressive candidates.

“It could be one, it could be several, it could be none,” Arnold Linhardt, a consultant to Engel’s campaign, said of the number of challengers.

Engel has a record “probably as liberal as anybody,” Linhardt added. “A number of people running against him don’t really have strong grounds to stand on.”

He also cited Engel’s long tenure as an asset. “These are people with seniority, influence,” he said. For them to lose their seats, “it doesn’t work for the citizens of the state.”

Nadler has rarely faced primary opponents: Before 2016, he had not been challenged for 20 years. But he also has broad name recognition and last week said impeachment was “under consideration” as part of his committee’s investigation of the president, potentially weakening a central attack from opponents who say he has not been aggressive enough.

The Brooklyn race, between Bunkeddeko and Clarke, is one of the few expected rematches — and perhaps the one considered most likely to turn over. The contest last year was one of the closest congressional primaries in the country.

But it, too, may reveal what it means to run in a post-AOC world, as well as why insurgency is hardly a comprehensive label, or a guarantee of success.

Like Ocasio-Cortez, Bunkeddeko last year made anti-machine politics a centerpiece of his campaign, a theme he plans to repeat this year. “For a long time, the machine has picked run-of-the-mill politicians who aren’t getting anything done,” he said.

But while Ocasio-Cortez repeatedly emphasized how her primary rival, Crowley, no longer matched the demographics of the district, both Bunkeddeko and Clarke are black. And while Ocasio-Cortez ran to the left of Crowley, Bunkeddeko readily admits there is little daylight on policy between himself and Clarke, who has one of the most liberal voting records in Congress.

Another candidate may run to the left of both Bunkeddeko and Clarke: Isiah James, a 32-year-old military veteran, is running as a democratic socialist.

Rebecca Katz, a political consultant who is working with Justice Democrats, said the argument for new faces alone might be insufficient.

“Because AOC happened, and happened in our backyard, everyone is looking for the next AOC in New York,” she said. But “if people are going to really shake things up, they have to show a clear contrast.

“They are not going to just say, ‘Oh, you’re a challenger. OK, I’m with you,’” Katz said of progressive voters.

Israel, who once led the House Democrats’ campaign committee, said incumbents’ attention to their résumés and campaign operations over the past year would add an extra hurdle.

“The energy is almost nuclear” among progressives, he said. “But I just think that if you have a Nadler or an Engel, who has consistently stood up to President Trump and whose ideology aligns with primary voters, it’s hard to make the case that those members should be replaced.”

Clarke’s campaign did not return a request for comment, but she said this year that she had reorganized her district office and was courting the more gentrified parts of her district, which had supported Bunkeddeko.

Still, Bunkeddeko said the enhanced attention would work to his benefit, too.

“What will be different is the level of attention that we didn’t necessarily get the last time around,” he said. “That’s an opportunity for us.”

Boylan said she was not dismayed by the idea of facing a prepared Nadler.

“I don’t want to surprise Congressman Nadler,” she said. “I want him to try as hard as he can, and obviously I want to win. But it doesn’t serve the district to not have a genuine race.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/19/nyregion/ny-democrat-house-challengers.html" id="472cb6e4-5c03-3d8f-a21d-18e9e5f52070">The New York Times</a>.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler has served in Congress for 27 years, rising to become the chairman of the powerful House Judiciary Committee. He has become a boldface name in the age of President Donald Trump, the linchpin of many Democrats’ hopes of impeachment.

House Democrats Prepare for Civil War as Challengers Plot Primary Battles

But Justice Democrats, sometimes seen as a proxy of sorts for its most famous ally, has already leapt into action.

Nadler has faced fewer primary opponents: just one since he was first elected, a key talking point for his challengers. But he also has broad name recognition and last week said impeachment was “under consideration” as part of his committee’s investigation of the president, potentially weakening a central attack from opponents who say he has not been aggressive enough.

The books, spanning thousands of pages in searchable PDF format, were quietly posted in February, the first time they had been available on the Board of Elections website. Officials said the online publication was necessary given changes to election law at the state level.

But after a series of news reports regarding the decision, some election and privacy experts warned that it could make sensitive personal information too readily available. And officials including Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Mayor Bill de Blasio and the New York City Council speaker, Corey Johnson, warned that the decision to publish the books could undermine public trust in the electoral process and jeopardize the security of voter information.

By Tuesday, the voter rolls had been removed from the Board of Elections’ website. Michael Ryan, the board’s executive director, said the board had made the decision during a conference call Monday, partly in response to public outrage after the media reports.

“Up until a media inquiry into this matter, we had seen no complaints from anyone that this information was there,” Ryan said Tuesday during a previously planned City Council hearing about election changes.

But, he said, “Since people were getting upset, we took it down.”

Voter rolls are public information by law. Political parties have long used voter rolls to target potential supporters. But historically, anybody interested in accessing it had to make a request to the state or local Board of Elections, which would then provide it on a CD or in a printed book, sometimes for a fee.

Elections experts said that those requests or purchases formed a log of who was trying to access the information. It also allowed elections officials to stipulate how the information could be used, such as for noncommercial purposes only.

The availability of voter data has become a flashpoint in recent years, as digital privacy concerns have gained prominence, and as President Donald Trump’s administration has sought to collect voter information for apparently political purposes.

Only two states, North Carolina and Ohio, make their data freely available for download on public sites, according to Michael McDonald, an associate professor at the University of Florida who runs The United States Election Project, which tracks election law across the country. Washington, D.C., published its voter rolls online in 2016 but discontinued the practice after receiving blowback.

Privacy experts worried that the ready availability of the information could endanger domestic violence survivors and others who might be subject to harassment, stalking or mail spam. Domestic violence survivors can request to be removed from the public rolls but must first obtain a court order.

Elected officials had denounced the board’s decision to publish the rolls online after WNYC reported it Thursday.

“I think it was a mistake,” Cuomo said Monday. “Putting people’s personal information online — in this new world, we’re worried about hacking; we’re worrying about identity theft.”

He added: “People can take it and use it to bad effect one way or the other.”

A spokeswoman for Johnson said Friday that the council would probe whether the information’s publication violated the law. And de Blasio said Monday that though he supported additional transparency, the Board of Elections, which has long been plagued by accusations of inefficiency, should have alerted voters that it was posting the rolls.

“Out of the mists of years and years of not giving us very clear information and purging people in the middle of the night, suddenly everything is online,” the mayor said.

Ryan had defended the decision as a one-off response to changes in the state election law that occurred earlier this year, which moved up the deadline by which the board is required to publish voter enrollment books. Because the board could not print books in time for the new deadline, he said, it decided to post digital files.

The board did not publicize the reversal of its decision, nor did it inform the City Council before a council member asked about it at the hearing Tuesday. The page where the books were previously posted now directs people to visit a Board of Elections office in person.

Ryan said the decision to remove the books from the board’s website was also influenced by practical reasons: The voter rolls were no longer needed by candidates seeking to win a spot on the ballot for this year’s primary elections, he said; the deadline for submitting petitions has passed.

Albert Fox Cahn, executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, a privacy advocacy group, said the Board of Elections had made the right decision to take the information down, but that it might have been too little, too late.

“We’re still alarmed that information on millions of New Yorkers could be exposed so easily,” Cahn said in a statement. “This episode highlights just how vulnerable our privacy is.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/30/nyregion/nyc-personal-voter-information-election-board.html" id="1275293e-41f7-3a74-af0c-d43563149547">The New York Times</a>.

After Backlash, Personal Voter Information Is Removed by New York City

NEW YORK — Bowing to fierce criticism from elected officials and privacy advocates, the New York City Board of Elections has removed the voter enrollment books that it had posted online, which had included every registered voter’s full name, party affiliation and home address.

The city’s Board of Elections recently posted its voter enrollment lists to its website, a massive upload of thousands of pages, covered in tiny all-caps letters, that offer a district-by-district breakdown of voters sorted by party and street name — one line for each of the 4.6 million active registered voters.

City officials said that the information was already public record, and that a new forum did not change its availability. But the move raised alarms among privacy advocates and some election experts, who said the ease of access could play into the hands of mail scammers, internet trolls and domestic violence perpetrators.

It even drew oblique criticism from Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, whose office emphasized the need for digital privacy.

“The New York City Board of Elections’ decision was theirs to make, but we believe sensitive voter information should always be protected,” Cuomo spokeswoman Caitlin Girouard said in a statement. She added, “When it comes to the current administration, we need to be extra vigilant to ensure New Yorkers’ information isn’t being used for politically motivated ill will.”

In New York, anyone can request comprehensive voter data from the state or local Board of Elections, which usually provides the information on a compact disc. Political parties have long used the information to target their flyers, phone calls and door-knocking campaigns.

But Albert Fox Cahn, executive director of Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, a privacy advocacy group, said there was a “big difference” between information that is technically public as a matter of law, and functionally and immediately available to anybody who wants it.

“It would be incredibly easy for anyone and everyone to simply take those documents and use them for whatever purposes they want,” he said.

The city’s decision, which was reported by public radio station WNYC, comes amid the growing availability of data, election-related or otherwise, and growing pushes to contain it. Several local or state parties, including in New York, have angered voters by sending out flyers warning them that their voting history is public record. Apps now enable voters to see which of their friends and acquaintances voted in the last election and to prod them to do so again — or shame them if they do not.

In 2017, a commission created by President Donald Trump to investigate his unsubstantiated claims of widespread voter fraud requested voter rolls from each state. Fifteen states did not comply. (New York did, though Cuomo said at the time that the state would not.)

North Carolina and Ohio make their data freely available for download on public sites, according to Michael McDonald, an associate professor at the University of Florida who runs The Election Project, which tracks election law across the country. Washington, D.C., published its voter rolls online in 2016, but after backlash, the law was revised, and the elections board there discontinued the practice.

Most jurisdictions will release voter data only after a request from someone who must give their name and contact information, or will give the data only to certain groups, such as political parties. Some charge a nominal fee.

NEW YORK — Are you registered to vote in New York City? If so, then anyone can find out your party affiliation, full name and home address down to the apartment number — all with a few mouse clicks.

Vivian Wang

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