GOP banks on crime ahead of midterms

NEW YORK — The graphic surveillance video shows a man on a sidewalk suddenly punching someone in the head, knocking them to the ground.

With muted screams and gunshots in the background, the video stitches together other surveillance clips of shootings and punching on streets and subway trains as a voiceover says, “You’re looking at actual violent crimes caught on camera in Kathy Hochul’s New York.”

That’s not exactly true.

The ad from Rep. Lee Zeldin, the Republican challenging New York Gov. Kathy Hochul in next month’s election, included video of an assault in California. Some of the footage depicted crimes that took place before Hochul took office last year. While acknowledging a mistake, Zeldin’s campaign defended the ad and said the message was clear: violent crime is out of control.

That’s a theme GOP candidates across the U.S. are sounding in the final month of the critical midterm elections. The issue of crime is dominating advertising in some of the most competitive Senate races, including those in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Nevada, along with scores of House and governors campaigns such as the one in New York.

The rhetoric is sometimes alarmist or of questionable veracity, closely echoing the language of former President Donald Trump, who honed a late-stage argument during the 2020 campaign that Democratic-led cities were out of control. That didn’t help Trump avoid defeat, but experts say Democrats would be wrong to ignore the potency of the attacks.

“When violence is going up, people are concerned, and that’s when we tend to see it gain some traction as a political issue,” said Lisa L. Miller, professor of political science at Rutgers University, who focuses on crime as a political issue in countries across the world.

The FBI released annual data this week that found violent crime rates didn’t increase substantially last year, though they remained above pre-pandemic levels. The report presents an incomplete picture, in part because it doesn’t include some of the nation’s largest police departments.