Good morning. It's Wednesday. We're following two stories — the results in the New York primaries for governor, and Ghislaine Maxwell's 20-year prison sentence for serving as Jeffrey Epstein's enabler. |
 | | Hiram Durán for The New York Times |
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She withstood challenges from Democratic opponents on her left and her right — Representative Thomas Suozzi, who made crime and public safety his main issues, and Jumaane Williams, the New York City public advocate, who said she had not addressed problems like soaring housing prices. |
As my colleague Nicholas Fandos writes, Hochul's victory set the stage for a potentially bruising fall campaign against Representative Lee Zeldin, a conservative congressional ally of former President Donald Trump who defeated three other Republicans in their primary. With warning lights flashing for Democrats nationally, Zeldin and his supporters hope they can build on discontent about 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 handpicked running mate, Lt. Gov. Antonio Delgado, survived a challenge from Ana María Archila, a progressive activist who was aligned with Williams and had been 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 after the resignation of Andrew Cuomo amid a sexual harassment scandal, victory in the primary was a crucial step toward winning a full term in November. She has plenty of money at her disposal, having amassed roughly $34 million in donations as of late last week. |
She spent the final days of the campaign presenting herself as a protector of liberal values in the wake of 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 victory party in Manhattan. "To the women of New York," she declared, "this one's for you." |
"We cannot and will not let right-wing extremists set us backwards on all the decades of progress we've made right here," she added, "whether it's a Trump cheerleader running for the governor of the state of New York or Trump-appointed justices on the Supreme Court." |
Zeldin defeated Andrew Giuliani, who had captured far-right support based on his connections to former President Trump, his former boss, and his lineage as the son of former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. Zeldin also beat Rob Astorino, the party's nominee for governor in 2014, and Harry Wilson, a corporate turnaround specialist who spent more than more than $10 million of his own money on the race. |
Expect a sunny day with a high near the mid-80s. In the evening, it will be mostly clear with temperatures around the high 60s. |
In effect until Monday (Independence Day). |
 | | Jacquelyn Martin/Associated Press |
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Maxwell sentenced to 20 years |
 | | Ghislaine Maxwell, right, and the financier Jeffrey Epstein.U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York/AFP, via Getty Images |
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Ghislaine Maxwell is the well-traveled former socialite who once hobnobbed with presidents, princes, moguls and magnates — and who was convicted last year of sex trafficking for conspiring with Jeffrey Epstein to exploit and abuse underage girls. On Tuesday, saying that "the damage done to these young girls was incalculable," Judge Alison Nathan sentenced Maxwell to 20 years in prison. |
Nathan also imposed a $750,000 fine, noting that Epstein had left Maxwell a $10 million bequest, money one of Maxwell's lawyers said she has not received. The disgraced financier was awaiting his own trial on sex trafficking charges when he hanged himself in a Manhattan jail cell in August 2019, leaving his culpability unresolved forever. |
Bobbi Sternheim, one of Maxwell's lawyers, said Maxwell would appeal, adding that Maxwell had been "vilified" and "pilloried" and "tried and convicted in the court of public opinion." She suggested that jurors had treated Maxwell as a stand-in for Epstein, who Sternheim said had escaped accountability: "Clever and cunning to the end, Jeffery Epstein left Ghislaine Maxwell holding the whole bag." |
The sentencing served as a bookend to a lurid case that spotlighted a world where the halo of glamour concealed the routine infliction of intimate, life-changing cruelty. The case against Maxwell showed how she and Epstein used wealth and status to exploit women and girls as young as 14 years old. Prosecutors said she recruited them for him. |
The judge said Maxwell was "not being punished in place of Epstein or as a proxy for Epstein," calling what Maxwell did "heinous and predatory." |
Maxwell's British-accented voice was heard for the first time since her arrest nearly two years ago. Standing at the lectern in blue prison scrubs, her ankles shackled, she acknowledged "the pain and the anguish" of the women who had addressed the court at the sentencing hearing. |
But she stopped short of apologizing or taking responsibility for the crimes for which she was convicted. |
"It is the greatest regret of my life that I ever met Jeffrey Epstein," she said. "Jeffrey Epstein should have been here before all of you." |
But he was not. Neither were others who had been in his orbit, among them Prince Andrew, who not only settled a lawsuit with one of Maxwell's accusers but was stripped of the title "His Royal Highness" and his honorary military titles. Andrew has been largely banished from public life since November 2019, when he told a BBC interviewer he had never met the accuser, Virginia Giuffre. How much he paid her to settle the lawsuit was not disclosed. |
Juror 50's failure to disclose childhood sexual abuse — a lapse that emerged in news reports after Maxwell was convicted — could figure in Maxwell's appeal. Her lawyers asked for a new trial on the grounds that she had been denied a fair and impartial jury. Judge Nathan refused to throw out the verdict, saying that even if Juror 50 had been forthcoming and the defense had moved to exclude him when the jury was still being chosen, she would not have granted the challenge. |
The first time I met my Brooklyn neighbor, he was sitting outside with a friend, cigar in hand, on a hot July evening. Beach chairs on the sidewalk. Tank top under an unbuttoned button-down. Sweat on a bald head. |
"Man, how do I have that much fun?" I asked him. |
"That's easy," he said, a tooth missing from his smile. "Be a New Yorker." |
We've become friends since then, the kind that stop and talk long enough — him in his Bronx accent — that I know he's been divorced, is often in love and works as a public defender. He's annoyed about the rats on the block and hires a friend to plant his front yard each spring. |
One morning, he told me that his cat, Fidel, had died. Fidel was beloved; I have photos of him posing on various stoops on 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 guy who hangs around the bodega nearby came around with a mango box. He knocked on my neighbor's door. When he came out, the guy nodded and opened the box. |
A tiny kitten peeked its head out. |
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B. |
| Melissa Guerrero, Ashley Shannon Wu, Olivia Parker and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com. |
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