Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey announced Thursday that he will not run for re-election as a Democrat this year after yielding to intense political pressure and federal allegations that put him at the center of an international bribery scheme.

But in a nine minute video On social media, the 70-year-old Menendez reiterated that he would not resign and left the door open to running as a political independent if he is acquitted at a trial scheduled for May.

“I am hopeful that my exoneration will occur this summer and that I will be able to continue my candidacy as an independent Democrat in the general election,” he said.

Yet Mr. Menendez’s decision to abandon the fight for his party’s nomination amounted to a painful concession after months of near-total defiance that left his political career teetering on the edge.

It was almost certain that he would lose the June primary for his own seat. Nearly every Democratic ally has abandoned him in recent months, and two prominent Democrats — Rep. Andy Kim and Tammy Murphy, wife of Gov. Philip D. Murphy — defeated him in the primaries.

“Unfortunately, the current charges I face – of which I am innocent and will prove – will not allow me to have such political dialogue and debate with political opponents who have already made it a cornerstone of their campaign,” said he. in Thursday’s video.

Campaigning as an independent against his own party’s political organization is unlikely to be any easier, even if he were to win in court. It could also jeopardize Democrats’ already tenuous hold on the Senate if he were to siphon votes from the Democratic nominee in a close race.

Mr. Menendez has until early June to decide whether to formally run an independent campaign. But former allies speculated that his motivation for retaining that option could have as much to do with his legal battles as politics: By remaining a potential candidate, he can continue to raise money to pay the lawyers representing him and his wife , Nadine Menendez, representing.

The senator had already spent $2.3 million from his campaign account on legal fees from October through December, federal documents show. He spent at least $295,000 more on a separate one legal defense fund. These charges are likely to increase in the coming weeks as his trial approaches.

Mr. Menendez’s legal troubles have been an ongoing distraction since September, when he and Ms. Menendez were indicted in an elaborate bribery scheme. Hours before Mr. Menendez’s announcement, his wife appeared in federal court in Manhattan for a hearing on whether her lawyers should be barred from representing her at trial because of a potential conflict of interest.

Mr. Menendez’s daughter, Alicia Menendez, a news anchor on MSNBC, was on the air, stepping in as host of “Deadline: White House,” when details of her father’s announcement began to spread.

It was the latest twist in the slow-motion collapse of a man who just six months ago was seen as one of the most powerful political figures in New Jersey and a leading national voice on foreign policy and immigration issues.

Mr. Menendez essentially broke the law for decades as he rose from mayor of his hometown of Union City to one of the country’s first Cuban-American congressmen. He avoided charges in a federal criminal investigation. After being indicted on separate bribery charges in 2015, he avoided conviction two years later when the trial ended in a hung jury and the government dropped the case after the judge dismissed the most serious charges.

Still, the case cost a lot of money. Mr. Menendez has spent more than $5 million to lawyers, and a little-known challenger received nearly 40 percent of the vote in the Democratic primary the following year. Party leaders rallied behind Mr. Menendez in the general election, and he defeated his well-funded Republican opponent, Bob Hugin, by 11 percentage points.

Mr. Menendez emphasized that history could repeat itself when federal prosecutors in Manhattan initiated the latest round of charges in September. But old allies who had stood by him during his previous trials concluded that this case was different and severed their ties with him.

In July, before the charges were announced, John FX Graham, a New Jersey insurance executive and member of the Democratic National Committee, donated $10,000 to Mr. Menendez’s defense fund.

But Mr. Graham said in an interview this week that he felt “betrayed and disappointed” after the details of the government’s case against Mr. Menendez emerged.

He said he told Mr. Menendez’s fundraising consultant that he would never contribute again. In response, he said he received a handwritten note from the senator assuring him that he would “beat this thing.”

“Bob Menendez’s career is over,” said Mr. Graham, who believes Mr. Menendez should resign. “It’s so simple and he hasn’t admitted it to himself yet.”

An initial indictment last fall alleged that Mr. Menendez and his wife conspired with others to accept gold bars, a Mercedes-Benz convertible and other lavish bribes in exchange for using his position as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to help foreign power. Egypt, and two criminal investigations in New Jersey.

The charging papers included photos of the gold, wads of cash and the Mercedes, all of which were found during a search of the senator’s home.

In the months since, prosecutors have added more than a dozen charges, accusing Mr. Menendez and his wife of conspiring to have him act as a foreign agent, taking steps to aid another foreign country, Qatar, and obstruct the course of justice.

The couple and two other defendants have pleaded not guilty on all counts. But a fifth defendant, a former insurance broker from New Jersey, pleaded guilty this month to trying to bribe the couple with the Mercedes. In a setback for the senator’s defense, former real estate agent Jose Uribe has agreed to cooperate with prosecutors.

Mr. Menendez, an experienced and combative political fighter, has accused these prosecutors of being overzealous and trying to smear him by taking his case directly to fellow senators and voters. His lawyers argue the indictment criminalizes normal legislative activity and ignores the constitutional protections afforded to members of Congress.

These arguments may prevail in court, but they have had little effect on voters, Democratic officials and even some members of his own staff who would have helped shape his political fate.

Nearly 75 percent of New Jersey voters disapprove of Mr. Menendez’s performance in the Senate, a recent Monmouth University Survey found – about the same percentage who find him guilty.

In Washington, Mr. Menendez has been urged to resign by more than half of Senate Democrats. His longtime political adviser and several key members of the congressional staff resigned.

At home, if he remains on the ballot in November, he will most likely face Mr. Kim or Ms. Murphy, who are locked in a highly competitive race for the Democratic nomination.

There are several Republican candidates in the primary, including a mayor and a former television reporter, both of whom have endorsed former President Donald J. Trump as the party’s standard-bearer this year, and a Jersey Shore hotel developer who has been critical of Mr. Trump .

Ms. Murphy did not immediately comment.

Kim, 41, warned that Democrats’ slim majority in the Senate was “at stake” and said he would be the stronger candidate in November if Menendez entered the race and drew votes from the Democratic nominee.

President Biden suffered his first defeat in the Democratic nomination race after being defeated in American Samoa on Tuesday night by Jason Palmer, a relatively unknown technology entrepreneur from Maryland, according to The Associated Press.

Mr. Palmer was the only Democrat to campaign in the island territory, about 2,500 miles southwest of Hawaii. Residents are not eligible to vote in the general election.

Mr. Palmer won four of the area’s six Democratic delegates, which are awarded proportionately based on final vote totals. Mr. Biden won the remaining two delegates. Minnesota Congressman Dean Phillips was the only other Democrat to appear on the ballot but not win any delegates.

This isn’t the first time American Samoa has achieved a surprising result in its Democratic caucus. In 2016 a majority of caucusgoers vote for free delegates instead of Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders. And in 2020, Michael R. Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York City, won there, giving him the only victory of his campaign.

In his quixotic campaign against Mr. Biden, Mr. Palmer has done just that emphasized his relative youth. At 52, he is the youngest Democrat in the race, and nearly 30 years younger than Mr. Biden. Mr Palmer has also tried to distinguish himself from policy makers: in February he called for a ceasefire in Gaza in a video posted on X.

Hidden in Terry Ahwal’s basement is her personal wall of fame: here she is at Obama’s Christmas party at the White House. Here is a framed thank you note from President Bill Clinton. There she is, grinning next to Jennifer Granholm, the former governor of Michigan.

President Biden, Ms. Ahwal says, will not appear on her wall.

After a lifetime of working in Democratic politics – running local campaigns, asking strangers for money, begging acquaintances to vote for candidates – she is now campaigning against the Democrat in the White House.

Ms. Ahwal, a Palestinian American who emigrated from the West Bank more than 50 years ago, is furious about the president’s alliance with Israel in its war against Hamas, which has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza. She doesn’t even have a better candidate in mind, but she swears there’s nothing Mr. Biden can do to get her back now.

‘Do you want my vote? You cannot kill my people in my name. It’s that simple,” she said recently, sitting at the dining room table of her home in the Detroit suburb of Farmington Hills. Photos from her travels to Jordan, Peru and the Great Lakes adorn her walls. “Whatever Israel wants, they get.”

Such promises to punish Biden in November have the power to reshape American politics — if they hold up. Michigan is home to 200,000 Arab Americans, and other key battlefields have smaller but significant populations. While there are no hard estimates of the number of registered voters, even a modest number of Democratic defections could spell trouble for the president’s reelection campaign. Mr. Biden won Michigan by 154,000 voters in 2020. Donald J. Trump won the state in 2016 by 10,700 voters.

There is no shortage of anger and disappointment directed at Mr. Biden in and around Detroit, where Palestinian Americans often display maps of pre-1948 Palestine and keys to family homes seized or abandoned during Israel’s war of independence. Ms. Ahwal regularly wears a pendant in the shape of the disputed land, with a phrase from a Palestinian poet: “This earth is something worth living for.”

In dozens of recent interviews in the Detroit area, Arab Americans described being consumed by the war as they endlessly scrolled social media for the latest images of the aftermath of the bombings, which began after Hamas captured Israel on October 7 attacked. coffee shops, there was almost unanimous agreement that Mr. Biden and his support for Israel’s right-wing government enabled the destruction. Most shared Ms. Ahwal’s position against voting for Mr. Biden.

Ms. Ahwal has spent hours calling and texting friends to urge them to “voluntarily” vote in the Democratic primary on Tuesday to register their discontent. She said she had heard virtually no resistance, although there are no reliable polls indicating how large the protest vote might be.

But the more consequential question is about November. Like Ms. Ahwal, few of those vowing to reject Mr. Biden know for sure whether they will sit out the election, vote for a third-party candidate or support Mr. Trump, now the all-but-certain Republican nominee.

Ms. Ahwal says she is under no illusions that Mr. Trump, who had even closer ties to Israel during his time in office, would push for a ceasefire or provide more support for the Palestinians. She knows that many voters outside the Arab American community think she and other Biden opponents are making fun of themselves, increasing the likelihood that the same president who banned millions of Muslims from traveling to the U.S. will return to the White House.

“The other person won’t be better,” she said, declining to say Trump’s name.

Yet, after long urging fellow activists to “work from within,” Ms. Ahwal believes this strategy has failed. Petitions, marches and boycotts have brought little change in U.S. policy, she says, as both political parties have offered steadfast support for Israel. She is angry, not only about Israel, but also about the iron grip the two parties have on the system. She is also clear about the irony: she is fighting the political system she helped build.

This is the only option she has, she said.

“Nothing works,” she said. “If you are desperate, what would you do?”

A changed world

When news of Hamas’s attacks on Israeli civilians arrived on Oct. 7, Ms. Ahwal immediately had a thought: It wouldn’t be long before Israel would retaliate.

As a young child in Ramallah, Ms. Ahwal, now 67, attended Catholic school and dreamed of becoming a nun. She often got in trouble for playing marbles with the boys or staining her clothes while climbing the walls in the neighborhood. She was too young to know or care much about politics.

That all changed in 1967, when Israeli forces invaded the West Bank in response to a surprise attack. Her family huddled in a basement as war reports filtered in on the radio. For days they waited for news from her father, who was stuck in Jerusalem, where he worked as a carpenter. The room smelled of urine; the children were instructed to wait before they were allowed to go outside.

The war lasted only six days, but profoundly changed life in the region.

“That’s what I call an introduction to hell,” Ms. Ahwal said. Her parents and the nuns at the school discouraged her and other students from protesting, but after witnessing shootings and beatings, Ms. Ahwal rebelled.

She mouthed off to soldiers, and maybe got away with it because she was a girl or because she was a Christian, which made her less likely to be seen as a threat. By the time she was 16, her worried parents sent her to live with relatives outside Detroit.

Even before she became a U.S. citizen in 1981, she began volunteering for Democrats. She worked for a Democratic county executive and volunteered with the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee. She put energy into municipal projects and Palestinian rights. She wrote letters to Congress, debated Israeli politicians passing through Detroit and raised money for Palestinians.

She volunteered for Clinton’s campaign because she was more attracted to his education policies than foreign policy. But in 1993, when Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin of Israel and Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, shook hands on the White House lawn as part of President Clinton’s peace negotiations, Ms. Ahwal was there and shared their hopes for a new era. Within months, her own optimism disappeared.

Scholars cite many factors underlying the deal’s demise: Arafat’s inability to accept Israeli and American offers. The assassination of Mr. Rabin by two right-wing extremists in 1995. Steady growth of settlements in the West Bank. The second intifada was followed by the takeover of Hamas. For Ms. Ahwal, the answer is simpler.

“It was really just a process of delay, a process of land theft, a process of deception,” she said, blaming the US for failing to contain Israel. “What happened is that the Palestinians were playing snooker.”

Frustration turns to anger

Ms Ahwal, a self-described pacifist, backed away from Hamas’ attacks on civilians on October 7. Yet she saw the Palestinians in Gaza in an impossible position, responding to decades of Israeli control. She viewed Biden’s embrace of Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, as a knee-jerk reaction that paved the way for many civilian deaths.

In late October, Ms. Ahwal went to Washington for a previously scheduled lobbying trip with Palestinian activists, urging State Department and White House officials to call for a ceasefire.

“I kept saying he would correct himself – the policymakers will change,” she said.

By Thanksgiving, when little had changed, she knew for sure: She could no longer vote for Mr. Biden. She saw no other way to force her party to break with decades of foreign policy.

In 2020, Ms. Ahwal had spent hours urging her friends and neighbors to vote for Mr. Biden — the alternative was too frightening to consider. They had already experienced the travel ban, the move of the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and the Trump administration’s tacit encouragement of Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

Biden’s term had not brought meaningful change, but it wasn’t worse, she thought — until October 7. Now, in addition to the approximately 1,200 Israelis kidnapped or killed that day, more than 29,000 people have died in Gaza. Entire neighborhoods have been razed to the ground. Settler violence in the West Bank has only increased.

She now calls the president a hypocrite. Like some Arab-American leaders in the Detroit area, she has turned down recent offers for meetings with White House officials. When she thinks back on decades of peace promises and calls for a two-state solution, she makes a grim assessment: “I just don’t believe in it anymore.”

Mr. Biden has recently tried to address this dissatisfaction. Last week, the administration said the United States would again consider new Jewish settlements in the West Bank as “contrary to international law.”

But that doesn’t come close to the policies that Ms. Ahwal says could change minds: labeling Israel an apartheid state, freezing military aid, supporting a Palestinian-led peace initiative. Only the latter move seems even remotely likely.

Ms. Ahwal knows her political analysis is loaded. She understands that withholding a vote for Mr. Biden effectively helps Mr. Trump.

She has debated her vote with her husband, Bob Morris, 72, the son of a longtime United Auto Workers union leader. Mr. Morris’s father was Jewish, but he was raised Christian and shares his wife’s views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Still, he said he would likely vote for Biden this fall.

Why? He answers with two words: “Donald Trump.”

“I am very concerned about our democracy,” Mr Morris said.

But like many other Palestinian activists she knows, Ms. Ahwal sees little difference between Republicans and Democrats when it comes to what she sees as a moral crisis.

She is asked if she is willing to risk a Trump victory over the conflict.

She responds with another question: Are Democrats willing to risk losing the presidency because of their support for Israel?

Asthaa Chaturvedi contributed reporting from Detroit.

Not long ago, it would have sounded ridiculous: a San Francisco Democrat calling for a rollback of California's cherished environmental protections in the heart of the city.

It would have been like painting the Golden Gate Bridge gray or cheering on the Los Angeles Dodgers. It just wouldn't have flown.

But as California becomes increasingly desperate for housing and San Francisco struggles to revitalize its urban core, Senator Scott Wiener says one thing must go: environmental reform.

Mr. Wiener will propose one of the most sweeping rollbacks of the once-vaunted California Environmental Quality Act on Friday by asking the state Legislature to let most projects in downtown San Francisco bypass the law over the next decade.

Empty buildings can be more easily demolished to build theaters, museums or college campuses, Mr. Wiener said. Office towers could be more easily converted into a wide variety of homes. The withering shopping center on Market Street could soon become something else – like the football stadium that Mayor London Breed envisions.

“We know we have to make downtown viable,” said Ms. Breed, a sponsor of the bill. “We cannot let anything get in the way of the process.”

For decades, Democrats in the form of Mr. Wiener and Ms. Breed were among the staunchest defenders of CEQA, a landmark law signed in 1970, months after the first Earth Day celebration. But in recent years, a growing number of Democrats have begrudged the environmental law as a barrier to the projects they want, from infill housing to solar farms. Gov. Gavin Newsom was among the critics last year urges the legislature to renew parts of the law so that California could “build, build, build.”

When CEQA (pronounced “see-qua”) went into effect, it gave residents a new way to challenge government projects during the construction boom that followed World War II, when highways cut through pastures and neighborhoods and rivers were dammed.

The California Supreme Court expanded the law in 1972, saying it could apply to virtually any project in the state. That opened the door for environmentalists to challenge suburban developments and polluting factories, but also gave anyone with complaints the ability to delay or end projects. CEQA can force multiple reviews, litigation costs and years of delays, enough to make construction unfeasible.

The law isn't the only thing standing in the way of San Francisco and downtown prosperity — 35 percent of office space remains vacant four years after the pandemic began. But there are dire examples of how the environment law has been used to block projects including food banks and Covid-19 testing sites.

“There are bike lanes that have been stopped by CEQA. It's crazy,” said Jim Wunderman, CEO of the Bay Area Council, a business-friendly public policy group.

In one high-profile case, a nonprofit that owns and operates affordable housing used the 2022 state law to argue that a plan to build hundreds of apartments in an empty Nordstrom parking lot would gentrify a downtown San Francisco neighborhood — a social economic argument that has gained popularity in recent years. The Board of Trustees sided with the nonprofit and asked for more environmental research.

“Should environmental research in this beautiful concrete jungle of downtown San Francisco work that way?” Mr. Wiener asked as he walked through the financial district, which was littered with retail vacancies and “For Rent” signs.

Mr. Wiener has already pushed changes through the state Legislature to loosen regulations on development, especially housing. He authored legislation in 2017 that accelerated the construction of affordable housing in cities that did not meet state-issued housing targets, and pushed for some transit projects and certain infill housing projects to be exempt from CEQA. And state lawmakers have for years accelerated review of major downtown stadium projects, including San Francisco's Chase Center and SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California.

But it would be a first to exempt such a large part – 150 blocks – of a city from environmental review.

Under Mr. Wiener's proposal, San Francisco officials would not spend a year or more analyzing the environmental impacts of each redevelopment project, one by one, and the average citizen would not have the right to sue to to stop them.

For Mr. Wiener, this is the definition of environmentalism in today's California, a state struggling with a lack of housing and rising homelessness in an era of climate change.

California's environmental activism used to focus on preserving animal habitats, open space and beaches — and fighting developers at all costs. But Mr. Wiener argues that adding dense housing near jobs and public transportation should be at the heart of the environmental movement. He and other Democrats have said infill housing will reduce hours-long car commutes and prevent further sprawl.

A large-scale exemption for downtown San Francisco will undoubtedly face opposition at home and in the State Capitol. Mr. Wiener's proposal to accelerate development near transit stops, overriding local zoning laws, died in the Legislature several years ago after an uphill battle. At the time, local governments and low-income Californians argued that Mr. Wiener's proposal would push existing renters to cheaper suburbs while benefiting developers and affluent renters.

A similar argument is likely this year. Paul Boden, executive director of the Western Regional Advocacy Project, which aims to eradicate homelessness and poverty, said the proposal seemed like a giveaway to developers and could further push the poorest workers out of the city.

Some environmentalists may side with Mr. Wiener. Jake Mackenzie, a board member of the Greenbelt Alliance, said he would much prefer infill development over projects like California Forever, a plan by tech titans to build a new city on farmland about 60 miles northeast of San Francisco .

But others will very likely be leery of allowing such a sweeping waiver of the state's historic environmental law.

David Lewis, executive director of Save the Bay, said his group was an early backer of Mr. Wiener's proposals to boost housing development near transit. But he added that Mr. Wiener's new plan sounded “pretty extreme.”

He agreed with critics who say environmentalists and other opponents of development have abused state laws. But he said environmental research is important, noting that construction projects can create a lot of noise, pollute the air or cause traffic jams — and it would be important to know those harmful effects in advance.

“People in government make smarter decisions when the public has more information, and that is the core of CEQA,” he said. “Excluding large projects from analysis is not the solution.”

Still, Mr. Wiener could find support from powerful working-class allies, who have increasingly come together unlike environmentalists in California. The bill introduced Friday would waive environmental reviews for only projects that pay a prevailing wage, typically a rate negotiated by unions. An environmental review would still be required for hotels and waterfront properties, as well as the demolition of any building that has housed tenants in the past decade.

Mr. Wiener says San Francisco desperately needs change. California law gives local governments some leeway in how they implement CEQA, and San Francisco has long given more credibility to development critics than other cities. A top state housing official denounced the city's roadblocks to housing construction last year as “egregious.”

Mr Wiener said it was necessary to exempt almost all downtown projects for ten years, because many of the possible solutions to revitalize the area – such as a new university campus, student dormitories, theaters, museums or artificial intelligence or biotech hubs – could otherwise come to a standstill.

After a strong rebuke from the state, San Francisco ultimately approved the Nordstrom parking lot project. But the developer, Lou Vasquez, said after so many delays, it's no longer possible financially.

“It remains a parking lot,” he says. Nordstrom no longer exists either.

John Whitmire, a moderate Democrat who has served in the Texas Senate since 1983, won the runoff election to become mayor of Houston on Saturday, according to The Associated Press. He defeated Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, a prominent Democrat in Congress, in the nonpartisan race. .

Mr. Whitmire was considered a front-runner from the moment he entered the race last year and prevailed in a city known for its diversity by creating a coalition that included Republicans and moderate white Democrats, as well as Latinx -American and Asian voters.

He made public safety the focus of his messaging, following a strategy that has proven successful for moderate Democrats in recent mayoral races in major cities across the country.

Ms. Jackson Lee, 73, a veteran lawmaker who was first elected to Congress in the 1990s, entered the race in March with strong support from many Democrats and black voters but struggled to get a message across and expand its support base.

Many Houstonians already knew Ms. Jackson Lee from her years in Congress, her penchant for the spotlight and her reputation for being tough on staff. Before the first round of voting, a University of Houston survey found that 43 percent of respondents said they would never consider voting for her, compared with 15 percent for Mr. Whitmire.

Ms. Jackson Lee received support from prominent Democrats, including Hillary Clinton, who came to Houston to endorse the candidate, and local leaders, such as outgoing Mayor Sylvester Turner and District Judge Lina Hidalgo. Ms. Jackson Lee was doing much better with Democrats than Mr. Whitmire before the vote.

But he appealed more to Republicans and independents, who had nowhere else to turn for a nonpartisan runoff election without a Republican candidate.

Voters appeared to be divided along stark racial lines, with Black Houstonians backing Ms. Jackson Lee by wide margins and white residents backing Mr. Whitmire. Race became an issue at certain points late in the campaign.

In one of their head-to-head debates, Mr. Whitmire said the city needed to do more to encourage diversity in top positions, saying too few of the top jobs were going to Latin American or Asian people. Many of the city’s top officials, including Mr. Turner, are black. Mr Turner said Mr Whitmire’s comments amounted to a racist “dog whistle”.

Mr. Whitmire focused on crime as his central message, as did outside groups who flooded mailboxes with fliers attacking Ms. Jackson Lee for not supporting police enough.

Despite police statistics showing crime declining from post-pandemic peaks, Mr. Whitmire said crime rates were still too high and Houstonians remained fearful. He pledged to work with the administration of Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, to bring 200 state troopers to the city for patrols. A similar attempt by city leaders in Austin to cooperate with state troopers failed amid allegations of racial profiling and aggressive police enforcement.

Mr Whitmire, 74, had a significant fundraising advantage, transferring millions from a campaign war chest amassed during his time in the Senate, as well as by raising money from prominent Republican donors.

A lifelong Democrat, Whitmire received Republican support from the start of the race, while also drawing support from groups like the AFL-CIO. He ignored questions about past conflicts of interest related to his work as a lawyer for a firm that also had clients who lobbied state government.

Both candidates struggled to energize voters in what has historically been a low-turnout race. Just under 132,000 people cast early votes, similar to other recent mayoral races, in a city of 2.3 million.

Some analysts said Ms. Jackson Lee may have entered the race too late.

“I’m not sure she had the time” to form a coalition, said Mustafa Tameez, who ran successful campaigns for former Houston Mayor Bill White. “And Whitmire ran a pretty flawless campaign.”

Mr. Tameez added that despite favoring Democrats in statewide and national elections, Houston voters are more centrist than those in other major cities. “We are not San Francisco, we are not New York,” he said. “Texas Democrats will always be different.”

President Biden admitted Wednesday that he is not the only Democrat who could defeat former President Donald J. Trump in next year’s election, but he made clear that he plans to stay in the race rather than passing on the torch give to a new generation.

Mr. Biden’s re-election campaign appeal to fellow party members is based on the argument that he is the Democrat best equipped to keep his impeached and indicted predecessor out of the Oval Office. But on Wednesday, the president was asked whether he believed other Democrats could prevail against Trump.

“Probably fifty,” Biden said. “I’m not the only one who could beat him. But I will beat him.”

The president’s comment came amid widespread doubts about it among Democrats, who worry that his low ratings portend a tough campaign to keep Trump away from the White House. At a campaign fundraiser in the Boston area, Mr. Biden said on Tuesday that “if Trump wasn’t running, I’m not sure I would be running,” suggesting how much his predecessor motivated his decision to run for office again. at the age of 81.

While polls show that most Democrats would prefer someone else to represent the party in next year’s elections, Biden’s case for another nomination is strengthened by the reality that there is no obvious replacement that inspires widespread confidence among Democrats that they can defeat Mr. Trump. .

Mr. Biden faces only long-term challengers in the Democratic primaries in Representative Dean Phillips of Minnesota and Marianne Williamson, the author. But several other ambitious Democrats are waiting in the wings in case Mr. Biden for some reason changes course and drops out, including Vice President Kamala Harris and the Govs. Gavin Newsom of California, Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan and JB Pritzker of Illinois.

Speaking to reporters after issuing a statement Wednesday on aid to Ukraine, Mr. Biden also rejected Republican attacks on his family’s business interests as Republicans in the House of Representatives pursue impeachment. Asked whether he had met with his son Hunter Biden’s business associates from other countries such as China and Ukraine, Mr Biden said: “I have not. It’s just a bunch of lies.”