THE NEW YORK TIMES, SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2020 MB 3BENJAMIN NORMAN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMESON SATURDAY AFTERNOON,as the cham-
pagne virtually uncorked itself in New
York City in celebration of what looked
like the end of Trumpism, an alternate
history was unfolding in the southern
stretches of Brooklyn. A Republican
named Mark Szuszkiewicz was leading in
a race against an incumbent for a State
Assembly seat in and around Coney Island
that had been held by a Democrat for
decades.
The current representative, a Haitian-
American named Mathylde Frontus, had
run a social-services agency she founded,
fighting for the poor and disabled. Mr.
Szuszkiewicz was a real estate agent
whose support extended incongruously to
tax credits for organic farmers and man-
datory life-skills training in public schools
(because too many people “don’t know
what a Phillips-head screwdriver is,” he
said in a debate). He also seemed to be a
QAnon follower.
It was not money that pushed such an
unusual candidacy forward. On the con-
trary, Mr. Szuszkiewicz raised about $1,400
— less than what it might cost to buy a
15-year-old Subaru. Ms. Frontus fared
marginally better — she brought in close
to $9,500, according to the state’s Board of
Elections, with top donations coming from
people who shared the last name Frontus.
Presented with a contest between an
incumbent holding four graduate degrees
— including a doctorate from Columbia —
and a candidate sympathetic to a fantasy
alleging world domination by a chain of
Satanist pedophiles extending from
Georgetown to Santa Monica, you would
think that New Yorkers beyond the dis-
trict might have opened their checkbooks
in the name of proven competence and
clarity.
But their attention was focused else-
where. They were long into a delirious
bender pouring piles of money into high-
profile Senate races around the country,
some of them predictably unwinnable.
Political giving, as with so much else in
life, is driven as much by emotion and a
vague sense of status proximity as it is by
ideology and a practical calculus. Liberals
have spent the past four years consumed
by rage, and nothing motivates quite like
fury, which demands no accounting of
logic. As it happened, three ZIP codes on
the Upper West Side sent more than $1.5
million in single, itemized donations to the
doomed Democratic Senate campaigns of
Amy McGrath in Kentucky, who was a
long shot to defeat Mitch McConnell, and
Jaime Harrison, who was unlikely to over-
take Lindsey Graham in South Carolina.
That donors gravitate toward the excite-
ment is another dimension of the psychol-
ogy. They don’t want to trawl local cable-
access channels to find their candidates,
Brad Hoylman, a New York State senator,
told me. “They want to see Rachel Mad-
dow talking about them.”
And so begins a precarious feedback
loop: the more Rachel Maddow talks
about you, the more money you raise and
then the more you have to spend buying
ads on “The Rachel Maddow Show.” Ads
for Sara Gideon, who challenged the Re-
publican incumbent Susan Collins for a
Senate seat in Maine and lost, ran on
television, Facebook, streaming services,
everywhere. She managed to raise more
than $100,000 from a single nine-block
radius on the east side of Midtown. From
New York, New Jersey and Connecticut,
she, Ms. McGrath and Mr. Harrison col-
lectively pulled in upward of $20 million.
To be clear, these numbers represent a
fraction of the spending that flowed into
these races from New York. They are
merely the donations under the $5,800
individual limit and stand wholly apart
from the money funneled to Senate races
from political action committees.
On the Democratic side, the biggest of
these is the Senate Majority PAC, aligned
with Senator Chuck Schumer of New York.
It put $5 million toward Mr. Harrison’s
effort and $35 million in the Senate race in
North Carolina, where a Democrat also
lost. In New York, the top 45 donors to this
committee contributed close to $50 mil-
lion, with nearly a quarter of that coming
from three Manhattan money managers.
Over all, the Senate Majority PAC raised
$254 million during the 2020 election
cycle; the subsequent failures ought to
prompt a new conversation about money
in politics among mainstream Democrats— about how it is solicited and allocated
and where it is best deployed. Both Ms.
McGrath and Mr. Harrison shattered
fund-raising records, delivering unsatisfy-
ing returns on investment. Similarly, Mi-
chael R. Bloomberg’s outlay of $100 mil-
lion spread through Florida, Texas and
Ohio to defeat President Trump ended in
losses for Joseph R. Biden Jr. in all three
states.
These questions take on an urgency
now that the country’s next four years
may be politically determined by the
outcome of two Senate runoffs in Georgia
— races that will attract enormous sums
of money on both sides. Days ago, the
former presidential contender Andrew
Yang announced that he and his wife were
moving to Georgia to help Democratssecure the Senate, without which the
party will achieve few of its goals. On
Twitter, he encouraged others to do the
same.
While it is unclear how many Demo-
crats will be free to pick up and move to,
say, Twiggs County, any money spent on
organizing and get-out-the-vote efforts will
arguably have a greater yield than send-
ing cash to individual candidates, much of
which often ends up in the pockets of
consultants and major networks.
As many on the left have pointed out,
the situation in Georgia requires a differ-
ent approach, when all four Senate candi-
dates are known quantities in their own
state. “When you have 100 percent name
recognition,” Bradley Tusk, an investor
and political strategist, said, “what is TV
really going to tell you?”
Progressives want to see the balance
shift, with more money given to state-
house races and those further down the
ballot, both to build a deep bench of poten-
tial candidates for federal elections and to
ensure that Republicans don’t gain more
control of redistricting. “Party organiza-
tions and recruitment organizations that
do candidate training need money and
resources consistently,” Michael M. Franz,
a political scientist and co-director of the
Wesleyan Media Project, told me. “It
seems like we learn and unlearn this les-
son on a regular basis.”
When Ms. Frontus’s opponent appeared
on the scene, she knew not to dismiss him,
although her fellow Democrats found that
much easier to do, she said. “People were
thinking in terms of textbook definitions
— ‘He has no money; his website looks
like a fifth grader did it; it’s not a real
race.’ ” But Ms. Frontus could see Trump
fervor rising around her district; people
were unhappy about quality-of-life issues
and blaming Democrats. Though the race
is still too close to call, Mr. Szuszkiewicz
has a real chance of winning.
“I specifically said, ‘I’m expecting this
guy to get upward of 15,000 votes,’ ” she
told me, “and people said I was ridicu-
lous.”Donors’ Dollars Reaped Scanty Rewards
Voting on Staten Island, above. Some liberal New Yorkers poured money into the campaigns of
doomed Democratic candidates in several high-profile Senate races around the country.For this election cycle,
lots of cash went to
consultants and TV but
much less to organizing
and voter turnout efforts.[email protected]; follow Ginia
Bellafante on Twitter: @GiniaNYT
GINIA BELLAFANTE BIG CITY
Rachel Shorey contributed research.
The Pandemic Widens the Learning Gap
Readers responded at nytimes.com to Ginia
Bellafante’s Big City column last Sunday on
the potential problems students face from
remote learning. Comments have been
edited.
I’M A HIGH SCHOOL TEACHERand teach
distance learning English 10 and IB (Hon-
ors) 11. Most of my students are doing fine.
In fact, since most of them are Black, Lati-
no, Hmong or multiracial, they nearly all
come from families that strongly prefer
they stay home to stay safe, as they know
their families are more likely be negatively
affected by Covid. We have Google meets
three times weekly for up to 90 minutes on
a prescribed A day and B day schedule, and
when I surveyed them they said they felt
proud to be learning new technology, proud
to be helping younger siblings with school,
proud to be working and contributing to
family income, proud to be helping around
the house, proud of keeping their elders
safe and proud of becoming more inde-
pendent. Are some struggling? Yes. Do the
same percentage of kids struggle when
school was in session in our building? Yes.
(Strange how no one worried about them
but their families and teachers then.)
In any event, we read together, we dis-
cuss, they tell me they actually like my
little lectures, the assignments keep rolling
in. I’m amazed at the numbers that show
up. Last Friday, 27 out of 31 kids in my
seventh period even showed up for “class”
at 2 p.m. on a gorgeous fall day.
EVA LOCKHART, MINNEAPOLIS
REMOTE LEARNING ISvery possible if you
do not have to work a full-time job because
doing it is a full-time job. Those who have
had success likely have a full-time care-
giver at home, and those saying it doesn’t
work are those most likely to have a full-
time job already. Can we readily admit
already that we have a serious child-care
issue in this country? This pandemic has
made it abundantly clear that Americans
see schools as child care first, and places of
learning second.
NICK, BROOKLYNWE ALREADY LOST THAT GENERATION,and
the previous one, to cellphones, tablets and
video games. As a teacher, it is amazing to
me that the same parents who find remote
learning so detrimental are the ones who
used a cellphone to distract their crying
infant and thought it was adorable that
their 3-year-old could play video games.
How many hours were they using technol-
ogy to babysit their kids before the pan-
demic? Teaching remotely is at least twice
as much work for teachers. If this weren’t
the best option, they wouldn’t be doing it.
TJ, THE BRONXTHE CHILDREN NEED ALLthe help they can
get. Most kids, when they fall behind, need
a big effort in the classroom to catch up,
lots of help from the teacher, hopefully withthe family backing them up. No one’s going
to have the resources to catch up an entire
generation when they finally get back in
the classroom.
The only thing that can be done at this
point is, get them back in sooner in places
where it’s safe, so at least they don’t back-
slide any further. And this is just the educa-
tional trouble. What do you think is hap-
pening to the children emotionally?ANN, BROOKLYNKIDS NEED TO BE IN SCHOOL;this long
winter at home will be devastating to their
emotional well-being. Schools should be a
priority before restaurants, gyms, etc.
ERIC, NEW YORKPining for a Brooklyn Club’s Comeback
Readers also responded to Julia Carmel’s
article last Sunday on the difficulties faced
by House of Yes during the pandemic.TRULY ONE OF THEbest venues in New
York. It rises to the moment we’re all living
in through themes of inclusion, consent,
escapism and expression. Was one of my
favorite places to spend any holiday, or just
to dress up in disco, space, opulent attire
for the fun of it. Plus, later on they even got
Manhattanites to not only make the trek to
Bushwick, but in costume! That’s really
something special.
SAMANTHA PADREDDII, BROOKLYNI LOVE HOUSE OF YESfor another reason —
as an older dude (55-plus) who loves to
dance, I have always felt welcomed there in
a way that I never have in other clubs.
H.O.Y. takes its inclusion policy seriously,
and that energy rubs off on the embracing
attitude that I have felt from the gather-
ings. So hope it survives and lives to see
another day!
JOHN, BROOKLYNREADER COMMENTS
MOHAMED SADEK FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Pixel, one of the performers who have
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