Date Time Perceived erosion of democracy spawns new campaign During his 16 years representing a Long Island district in Congress, Steve Israel said he saw divisiveness and partisanship grow exponentially. By the time he retired from the House of Representatives in 2017, compromise and respect for democratic norms seemed almost irrelevant, he said, and his biggest fear was not of foreign conflict but internal division. “All of that came home in a very powerful and emotional way when I saw the images of people stampeding through the Capitol and ransacking it (on Jan. 6),” said Israel, director of the Institute of Politics and Global Affairs (IOPGA). “They weren’t trying to ransack the building; they were trying to ransack democratic norms.”