紐時賞析／今年大小選舉 全都和疫情有關

From School Boards to the Senate, All Politics Is Virus Politics in 2020

今年大小選舉 全都和疫情有關

The coronavirus pandemic upended Pamela Walsh’s life. It shut down her office, leaving her working at home from a folding table. It forced her to turn her dining room into a Zoom classroom for her 7-year-old son. And the virus propelled a still more unlikely change: It led Walsh to run for public office.

新冠肺炎大流行顛覆了帕梅拉．沃許的生活。她的辦公室因而關閉，讓她必須在家中摺疊桌上工作；她不得不為了7歲兒子，把家中餐廳變成透過視訊軟體Zoom聽課的教室；病毒還促成了更不可思議的改變：讓沃許競選公職。

“It wasn’t even on my radar screen,” said Walsh, 47, a political adviser in Concord, New Hampshire, who has long worked for Democrats but never before considered seeking elective office herself. Months of supervising elementary school lessons from home, with little idea of when her son would return to school, convinced Walsh that she should vie for a seat on her local school board.

47歲的沃許說：「這從來不在我考慮中。」她是住在美國新罕布夏州首府康科德的政治顧問，向來為民主黨工作，卻從未考慮競選公職。她在家中監督兒子的國小課業數月，不知兒子何時才能到校復課，使她深信應在當地學區委員會爭取一席。

“I decided I needed a voice like mine on the board,” Walsh said in a phone interview.“Everyone is struggling right now a bit and needs to be represented by how these policies impact real families.”

沃許接受電話訪問時說：「我認定學區委員會需要有我這樣的聲音。目前人人多少都在掙扎，需要有人幫他們表達這些政策如何影響真實的家庭。」

By some measure, all politics is virus politics in 2020, and the federal government’s handling of COVID-19 has become an explosive issue in the presidential race, which has been further complicated by President Donald Trump’s own hospitalization for the virus.

2020年所有的政治多少都是病毒政治，聯邦政府應對疫情的方式成了總統大選的爆炸性話題，而總統大選因總統川普本人染疫住院而更形複雜。

Yet around the nation, there are local and state races in which the pandemic has also taken an outsize role. In some cases, the virus has been the reason for running; in others, handling of the pandemic has become the defining issue, eclipsing ordinary matters of taxes and services.

不過，在全美各地一些地方和州級選舉中，疫情的影響力也大得出奇。在某些事例中，疫情是參選的唯一理由；另有些例子則是政府對疫情的處置成為首要議題，使稅制和公共服務等尋常事務黯然失色。

The virus — and the government’s response to it — has inspired parents, hair salon owners and others to run for the first time, turned sleepy races into competitive matches and injected a level of unpredictability and rancor into normally tranquil down-ballot contests.

疫情與政府抗疫的方式，激起為人父母者、髮廊老闆等各色人物首次參選，讓冷清的選舉具競爭性，並為向來平靜的低階選戰注入某種程度的不可預測性和怨恨。

“This is an issue that no one expected to be one of the pillars of this election, but it has clearly become one,” said Robert Griffin, research director for the Democracy Fund Voter Study Group, which is partnering with academics at UCLA to poll about 6,000 Americans each week leading up to the election.

「民主基金選民研究小組」研究主任葛里芬說：「沒有人料到這個議題會成為這場選舉的一大支柱，而事實卻顯然如此。」研究小組與洛杉磯加州大學學者合作，在這場大選前每周對大約6000名美國人做民調。

Restrictions to control the spread of the virus — or the lack of such restrictions — have become motivating factors in races of all sizes.

防疫管制與缺乏防疫管制，成了各級大小選舉的激勵因素。

文／Sarah Mervosh and Manny Fernandez 譯／李京倫 核稿／樂慧生