A man hit and knocks down an old man walking down the street. Other shoot to a victim who was with two children. four hooded they rob a jewelry store after smashing the window with a hammer. Shooting at the door of a “cellar”. A thief recorded by the security camera about to enter a house. A violent fight in the subway. “The November 8th Vote as if your life depended on it. I might,” says a voiceover.
The 30-second spot has been running for weeks on local New York television. It was paid for by the campaign Lee Zeldin, the Republican candidate for governor who in the Parliamentary election next week tries to remove the democrat from office Kathy Hochul. It is peppered with controversy, from using the image of an incident that took place in California to using others from events before Hochul arrived at the post or including that of a black man in a mental crisis who did not carry a weapon but a piece of metal and was later shot five times by police. Y is working.
For the first time since Republican George Pataki sprung a surprise in 1994 and snatched Patriarch Mario Cuomo out of Albany, democrats face serious chances of losing the government of New York, and to suffer a debacle in the races to the lower house in a state that Joe Biden won in 2020 by 23 points. The comfortable advantage of more than 16 points that Hochul had in September thanks to the mobilization of voters against the decision of the Supreme Court to repeal the constitutional protection of the right to abortion and due to Zeldin’s closeness to Donald Trump has been reduced by leaps and bounds. And one of the keys to this turnaround has been the focus that the Republican has placed on crime and insecurity.
Zeldin is not alone. In numerous races throughout the country, and following a classic manual, the Republicans reiterate as one of their central messages the denunciations of the alleged responsibility of the Democrats in the deteriorating securityreal or perceived, and accusations that they are “soft on crime“. And it is a message that resonates among citizens, who according to surveys place crime as the second most important issue after inflation and the state of the economy and in some places, like New York, even as the first. According to polls, voters also believe that Republicans are better able to combat the problem.
Impairment and perception
Although crime rates in the US and in large cities like New York are well below what they were in the 1990s, they began to rise during the pandemic. The lack of unified data at the national level makes it difficult to determine the exact figures, but what is certain is that the perception that the situation gets worse and the anxieties are real. And according to a Gallup poll, the 56% of the population believe that there is more crime where they live (the highest level recorded since 1972) and the 78% are convinced that they have climbed in the country.
That growing sense of insecurity was, in fact, central to the Democrat Eric Adams, former police officer who promised to take a hard line on crime, won the New York mayoral election last year. And although homicides in the city have fallen 14% this year and shootings 13%, violent crime has risen 34%, with 38% more robberies and 32% more robberies.
The problem is not only, as Republicans try to denounce, of large cities or states governed by Democrats. In OklahomaFor example, twice as many murders were recorded last year as in California or New York. But it is undeniable that there is concern, and that there is discontent also with some progressive politics that Republicans denounce, such as efforts to reform criminal justice or the bail systema discontent that was exposed this summer when a citizen vote removed San Francisco’s progressive attorney general from office.
Republicans also link the deterioration in security to efforts after the George Floyd protests to reform or cut police funding. They lean on a preserved media ecosystemr that fuels your tactics fear with a intensified coverage of events (FoxNews, for example, has spent twice as much time on crime as competing networks since Biden entered the White House.) And once again they wield controversial tools from his manual, such as dyeing their racism messages.
In Wisconsinfor example, ads against Mandela Barnesthe lieutenant governor and Democratic candidate for the Senate, who is blackthey have called it “different” and “dangerous” (Joining her image with those of Congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib). And at a rally in Nevada for Republican candidates in which he participated alongside Trump, Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville assured that the Democrats are “pro-crime” and want to provide “reparations (the economic compensation that is being debated to give to the descendants of slaves) to the people who commit the crime“.
Democratic response
The democrats they have reactedin some cases like Hochul in New York late, to try to fend off aggressive attacks and underline their achievements or measures in the fight against crime and, also, the republican inconsistencies. They denounce lies and racism and, above all, the Conservative opposition to regulating firearms. And they underline the inconsistency of portraying themselves as a party of law and order when at the same time minimize the assault on the Capitol, where the mob violently attacked the police. “Don’t tell me you support law enforcement if you don’t condemn what happened on January 6,” Biden said in a speech in August.
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The strength of crime and insecurity as a central issue in this electoral cycle can also be ratified by following the trail of money. According to an analysis of CNN AdImpact data, only in the first three weeks of October did the Republican field spend on ads focused on this issue. $64.5 milliona quarter of the total spent on advertising, while the Democrats spent 58 million (the 15%).
Who prevails will be determined at the polls, but what is certain is that crime will play a decisive role not only in New York. He has taken center stage in the race for the government of Oregonwhich the Democrats could lose for the first time since 1982, and is also vital in Wisconsin or in the equally decisive fight between Democrat John Fetterman and Republican Mehmet Oz for the Senate in Pennsylvania.