Trump Backers Block Highways as Election Tensions
Play Out in the Streets
Law enforcement authorities are increasingly worried,
not just about what they have already seen, but also about what has been
threatened, especially online.
Mario M.
Cuomo Bridge in Tarrytown, N.Y., on Sunday.Credit...Stephanie Keith/Getty
Images
By Rick
Rojas, Jennifer Steinhauer and Emma G. Fitzsimmons
Published
Nov. 1, 2020
Updated
Nov. 2, 2020, 1:02 a.m. ET
Vehicles
with Trump flags halted traffic on Sunday on the Garden State Parkway in New
Jersey and jammed the Mario M. Cuomo Bridge between Tarrytown and Nyack, N.Y.
Another pro-Trump convoy in Virginia ended in a tense shouting match with protesters
as it approached a statue of Robert E. Lee in Richmond.
In Georgia,
a rally for Democrats was canceled shortly before it was scheduled to begin on
Sunday, with organizers worried about what they feared would be a “large
militia presence” drawn by President Trump’s own event nearby.
As the
nation races toward Election Day, the tensions and acrimony surrounding an
extraordinarily divisive campaign, coming on the heels of a summer of protests
and racial unrest, are bleeding into
everyday life and adding further uncertainty to an electoral process in which
Mr. Trump has not committed to a peaceful transfer of power.
Sunday’s incidents came a day after a group of Trump
supporters in Texas, driving trucks and waving Trump flags, surrounded and slowed
a Biden-Harris campaign bus as it drove on Interstate 35, leading to the
cancellation of two planned rallies. The F.B.I. confirmed on Sunday that it was
investigating the incident.
On
Saturday, President Trump tweeted a video of the incident with a message, “I
love Texas!” After the F.B.I. announced it was investigating, he tweeted again,
saying, “In my opinion, these patriots did nothing wrong,” and instead “the FBI
& Justice should be investigating the terrorists, anarchists, and agitators
of ANTIFA.”
In Graham,
N.C., a get-out-the vote rally on Saturday ended with police using pepper spray
on some participants, including young children, and making numerous arrests.
Organizers of the rally called it flagrant voter suppression.
“These
people are afraid,” the Rev. Gregory B. Drumwright, his eyes still burning,
said as he assailed the police action in Graham. “There’s a climate of fear
around this.”
And those
were just the incidents that were caught on video. Kristen Clarke executive
director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a voting rights
group, said there had been many more. The group
settled a lawsuit last month against officials in Graham who they
accused of violating the First Amendment rights of protesters.
“We are
very concerned about groups lurking and trying to intimidate voters in
particular communities,” Ms. Clarke said. Her group’s election protection
hotline received calls from nearly a dozen counties in Florida just over the
past week, she said, reporting individuals or groups harassing voters at the
polls.
“We want
voters to know these sporadic incidents are being addressed, and we want them
to be able to cast their ballot,” Ms. Clarke said.
Law
enforcement authorities are increasingly worried, too — not just about what
they have already seen, but also about what has been threatened, especially
online.
Most of the
internet threats have not migrated to the nation’s streets, according to a
senior law enforcement official who has reviewed Homeland Security Department
bulletins and warnings as well as online activity from instigators on the
political right and left. But law enforcement officials fear that online posts
by instigators could materialize into violent acts.
Trump
supporters mounted a motorcade across the New York City region on Sunday,
waving flags and cheering for the president while clogging traffic on key
arteries.
The
supporters were spotted crossing the Mario M. Cuomo Bridge over the Hudson
River in the city’s northern suburbs and bringing the busy Garden State Parkway
in New Jersey at least partly to a standstill. Officials in New Jersey told a
local newspaper that the motorcade stopped near the Cheesequake Service Area —
about 30 miles outside New York City — and “backed traffic up for about five
miles.”
Supporters
waved Trump flags, leaned out of their vehicles wearing Make America Great
Again hats and honked and cheered.
The Mario
M. Cuomo Bridge might have been a symbolic target for Republicans — it is named
for the deceased father of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, a Democrat who has quarreled
frequently with President Trump.
A separate
set of anti-Trump protesters marched in New York City to counter the pro-Trump
caravans, leading to some scuffles and arrests.
Groups that
monitor voting have been preparing for intimidation at the polls at least since
September, when protesters disrupted voters at a polling location in Fairfax,
Va.
Of
particular concern are militia groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers,
whose members have lurked on internet chat boards like 4Chan. “We are keeping
an eye on them,” said Joanna Lydgate, national director of the Voter Protection
Program which works closely with law enforcement on voting issues.
Law
enforcement officers can be a complicating factor in protecting voters. While
their presence can be welcome to help calm tensions, they can also create
anxieties. Ria Thompson-Washington, an executive vice president with the
National Lawyers Guild, said she had been in Georgia since mid-October, when
early voting began in the state, and had witnessed “a heavy police presence” at
the polls.
All of this
has created extraordinary uncertainty, with fears driven not only by the
potential outcome of the election but by the tensions that might erupt in the
days and weeks after Election Day.
“People are
upset, and scared, and frustrated,” said Caitlin Foley, a physician in
Philadelphia. “I think there will be unrest, regardless of whichever candidate
is in the lead.”
Turmoil has
defined 2020. More than 230,000 Americans have died of Covid-19; the economy
has cratered, and racial tension has sparked unrest across the country.
Gun stores
have seen their stocks depleted as sales have soared. One survey of adults
across the country, conducted in October by the National Police Foundation and
Elucd, a data research firm, found that some three-quarters of respondents
worried that the election would spur civil unrest. Across the political
spectrum, there was a sense that the election carried enormous stakes in terms
of determining the future of the country.
“I’m
encouraged that more than 90 million Americans have already cast their ballots,
which, if you do the math, is the equivalent of the entire 1996 presidential
election,” Jeh C. Johnson, who served as secretary of homeland security during
the Obama administration, said Sunday on the CBS program “Face the
Nation.” “But we cannot discount the
possibility,” he added, “of some trouble or unanticipated events, given the
tension that exists out there.”
In an
interview on ABC, Jason Miller, an adviser to the Trump campaign, said that
Republicans were ready for a legal battle over ballots that have not been
counted by Tuesday. He claimed that
Democrats expect President Trump to be ahead on election night, “and then
they’re going to try to steal it back after the election.”
Even
prominent Republicans pushed back on the statement, saying that the counting of
ballots almost never ends on election night and that any move to end the count
that quickly would be an extraordinary breach of democratic practices.
Mr. Miller
deflected questions about the highway disruptions by Trump supporters, saying
he was “more concerned with downtown Washington businesses having to board up
their windows in anticipation of lawless, violent Biden supporters rioting and
looting on Tuesday night.” There was nothing to suggest that would happen.
Not all the
political activity on Sunday was disruptive.
In Atlanta,
from the virtual pulpit of Ebenezer Baptist Church, the storied congregation
once led by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., there was a call for calm and
a plea for agitators to stay away.
“In the
wake of an election, I say to the Proud Boys and to Antifa and to other
militias and armed groups, Atlanta does not want your foolishness,” the Rev.
Robert M. Franklin Jr., a candidate in a runoff election to serve the final
month of Representative John Lewis’s term in Congress, said in a sermon.
In
Harrisburg, Pa., Annie Bravacos, 17, said she had felt a creeping dread about
the election, and since she and her friends were too young to vote, they
decided to canvass on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
“It’s easy
to just get terrified about that, so just doing this, I guess, is what makes us
feel better,” she said. “It’s, you know, we’re actually doing something, even
if it’s small.”
In Ashland,
Ky., Mark Carlisle, whose blue pickup flies two American flags and booms out
patriotic songs from a speaker, said he was more concerned about ballot
tampering than anything happening at his local polling station in a school.
“My ballot
getting messed with? Yes. Me afraid to go somewhere? No,” said Mr. Carlisle, a
58-year-old building contractor, explaining why he refused to vote by mail or
vote early.
In Durham,
N.C., Garrett Langley Henson was updating his website last week when an unknown
number popped up on his phone. When Mr. Langley Henson answered, a prerecorded
voice told him to “stand back, stay home, stay safe,” and then hung up. He
received the same call, but from a different number, the next day.
“The
undertone was very menacing,” Mr. Langley Henson said.
In Graham,
N.C., a city of roughly 15,000 people between Greensboro and Durham, the police
said protest organizers had failed to coordinate with city officials in
planning their rally, and that it became “unsafe and unlawful.” Officials
disputed any accusations of trying to thwart voters from getting to the polls.
The police
said that eight people were arrested on suspicion of resisting the officers and
failing to disperse. One was charged with assaulting a law enforcement officer.
The department also said officers fired a “mild irritant” on the ground and not
directly at protesters.
Pastor
Drumwright tried to preach a message of resilience on Sunday. For generations,
obstacles had stood in the way of voting for African Americans. And this, in
his view, was the latest iteration.
“We’re
still having to march, to protest, to petition, to speak out, to demonstrate,
to activate,” Pastor Drumwright said. “We are shaken,” he added. “But we are
not broken.”
Reporting
was contributed by Shaila Dewan, Kathy Gray, Jon Hurdle, Zolan Kanno-Youngs,
Sean Keenan, Neil MacFarquhar, Sabrina Tavernise and Michael
Venutolo-Mantovani.
Correction:
Nov. 2, 2020
An earlier
version of this article misstated when the incident involving Trump supporters
and a bus for Joseph R. Biden Jr.'s campaign occurred. It was Friday, not
Saturday.
Rick Rojas
is a national correspondent covering the American South. He has been a staff
reporter for The Times since 2014. @RaR
Jennifer
Steinhauer has been a reporter for The New York Times since 1994. She has
worked on the Metro, Business and National desk, and served as City Hall bureau
chief and Los Angeles bureau chief before moving to Washington in 2010. She is
the author of a novel, two cookbooks and "The Firsts" the story of
the women of the 116th Congress. @jestei
Emma G.
Fitzsimmons is the City Hall bureau chief, covering politics in New York City. She
previously covered the transit beat and breaking news. @emmagf
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