Hochul and Zeldin will record it in the fall

Good morning. It is Wednesday. We follow two stories: the results in the New York primary for governor and Ghislaine Maxwell’s 20-year prison term for serving as Jeffrey Epstein’s enabler†

She withstood the challenges of Democratic opponents on her left and right — Representative Thomas Suozzi, who made crime and public safety his top concerns, and Jumaane Williams, New York City’s public advocate, who said she didn’t care about problems like rising house prices. had addressed.

As my colleague Nicholas Fandos writes, Hochul’s victory set the stage for a potentially devastating fall campaign against Representative Lee Zeldin, a conservative congressional ally to former President Donald Trump who defeated three other Republicans in their primary. With warning lights flashing nationally for Democrats, Zeldin and his supporters hope they can build on discontent over inflation and crime and win a statewide race in New York for the first time in 20 years.

The Democratic contest for lieutenant governor also went Hochul’s way: Her hand-picked running mate, Lieutenant Governor Antonio Delgado, survived a challenge from Ana María Archila, a progressive activist affiliated with Williams and endorsed by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Diana Reyna, Suozzi’s running made, was on track to finish in third place.

For Hochul, who took office less than a year ago following the resignation of Andrew Cuomo amid a sexual harassment scandal, the primary victory was a crucial step on his way to winning a full term in November. She has a lot of money at her disposal and collected about $34 million in donations late last week.

In the final days of the campaign, she presented herself as a protector of liberal values ​​in the wake of the landmark Supreme Court rulings on abortion rights and gun regulations. Hochul, the state’s first female governor, stood symbolically under a glass ceiling at a Manhattan victory party. “For the women of New York,” she declared, “this is for you.”

“We cannot and will not allow right-wing extremists to turn us back on all the decades of progress we’ve made here,” she added, “whether it’s a Trump cheerleader running for governor of New York state,” she added. York of Trump-appointed Supreme Court justices.”

Zeldin defeated Andrew Giuliani, who had gained far-right support based on his connections to former President Trump, his former boss and his parentage as the son of former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. Zeldin also defeated Rob Astorino, the party’s 2014 governor candidate, and Harry Wilson, a corporate change specialist who spent more than $10 million of his own money on the race.

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Ghislaine Maxwell is the much-traveled former socialite who once bumped into presidents, princes, moguls, and magnates — and was convicted last year of sex trafficking for conspiring with Jeffrey Epstein to exploit and abuse underage girls. On Tuesday, saying that “the damage to these young girls was incalculable,” Judge Alison sentenced Nathan Maxwell to 20 years in prison.

Nathan also fined $750,000, noting that Epstein left Maxwell a $10 million bequest, money one of Maxwell’s attorneys said she didn’t receive. The disgraced financier was awaiting his own trial on sex trafficking charges when he hanged himself in a Manhattan prison cell in August 2019, leaving his debt unsolved forever.

Bobbi Sternheim, one of Maxwell’s attorneys, said Maxwell would appeal, adding that Maxwell had been “offended” and “violated” and “tried and convicted in the court of public opinion”. She suggested that judges had treated Maxwell as a stand-in for Epstein, who Sternheim said had escaped responsibility: “Clever and cunning to the end, Jeffery Epstein left Ghislaine Maxwell with the whole bag clutched.”

The conviction served as a bookend for a grisly case that spotlighted a world where the halo of glamor masked the routine infliction of intimate, life-changing cruelty. The Maxwell case showed how she and Epstein used wealth and status to exploit women and girls as young as 14. Prosecutors said she recruited them for him.

The judge said Maxwell was “not punished in place of Epstein or as a proxy for Epstein,” calling what Maxwell did “abominable and predatory.”

Maxwell’s British-accented voice was heard for the first time since her arrest nearly two years ago. Standing by the lectern in blue prison clothes, her ankles chained, she acknowledged “the pain and anguish” of the women who had addressed the court during the sentencing hearing.

But she stopped apologizing or taking responsibility for the crimes she was convicted of.

“It’s the biggest regret of my life that I’ve ever met Jeffrey Epstein,” she said. “Jeffrey Epstein should have been here before all of you.”

But he wasn’t. Nor were others who had been in his job, including Prince Andrew, who not only settled a lawsuit with one of Maxwell’s accusers, but was also stripped of the title of “His Royal Highness” and his military honors. Andrew has been largely banned from public life since November 2019, when he told a BBC interviewer that he had never met the accuser, Virginia Giuffre. How much he paid her to settle the lawsuit has not been disclosed.

The jury’s inability to disclose childhood sexual abuse – a flaw that emerged in news reports after Maxwell was convicted – could play a role in Maxwell’s appeal. Her lawyers requested a new trial because she was denied a fair and impartial jury. Judge Nathan declined to overturn the verdict, saying that even if Juror 50 had come and the defense decided to exclude him while the jury was still being selected, she would not have accepted the challenge.

METROPOLITAN diary

Neighbors

Dear Diary:

The first time I met my neighbor in Brooklyn, he was sitting outside with a friend, cigar in hand, on a hot July night. Beach chairs on the sidewalk. Tank top with an unbuttoned button-down. Sweat on a bald head.

“Man, how can I have so much fun?” I asked him.

“That’s easy,” he said, a tooth missing from his smile. “Be a New Yorker.”

We’ve become friends ever since, the kind who keep talking long enough — him with his Bronx accent — that I know he’s divorced, often in love, and works as a public defender. He is annoyed by the rats in the neighborhood and hires a friend to plant his front yard every spring.

One morning he told me that his cat, Fidel, had passed away. Fidel was loved; I have pictures of him posing on several sidewalks in the block. My neighbor didn’t sound sad when he told me what had happened, but his animated gestures seemed meant to hide the loss he felt.

That evening, a man who hangs out near the bodega came by with a mango box. He knocked on my neighbor’s door. When he came out, the man nodded and opened the box.

A little kitten peeked out with its head.

† Laura Buccieric

Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here†