New York City has a very important mayoral election this year, which will very probably be decided in the June Democratic primary. Big debate coming up which voters will get to watch on …
Oh no. Zoom.
It’s true. You can now go to a bar without a mask in New York, but apparently the people who run our debates feel it would be too dangerous to allow the eight major mayoral candidates onstage together.
I believe I speak for many voters when I say that, while health is certainly the top priority, you have to give a little consideration to the fact that trying to sort out eight candidates by what their little square heads are saying on a computer screen is … a challenge.
It’s a tough year for responsible, hard-working voters. California has to decide whether Gov. Gavin Newsom should be given the heave-ho by recall. Lots of complaints from the right about Newsom’s tax and immigration policies, but his reputation went into a bipartisan nosedive when he was spotted having a maskless dinner with a bunch of well-to-do folks at a very fancy restaurant during the pandemic.
I know, Californians, it does make you feel as if the guy is out of touch. Let me just point out that in the New York mayor’s race, two candidates estimated that the median price of a house in Brooklyn was around $100,000. That’s about $800,000 short. And it was particularly noteworthy since one of the guys making the guess, Shaun Donovan, is running on his record as federal housing secretary during the Obama administration.
Not going to pursue that factoid further. Not even to say that another contender, who used to be counsel to our current mayor, guessed said typical house would cost $1.8 million.
OK, kinda depressing.
People, who would you rather have running your city?
A. A housing expert who underestimated by more than 88 percent what the run-of-the-mill voter would pay to buy a house in Brooklyn.
B. A would-be breath of fresh air who didn’t bother to vote in any of the mayor’s races between 2001 and 2017. Looking at you, Andrew Yang.
C. The Brooklyn borough president, Eric Adams, an ex-cop vegan reformer who, as The Times reported, currently has nearly $8 million on hand, a lot of it from donors in the — yes! — real estate industry.
Adams definitely has some question marks, campaign finance-wise, but you’ve got to give him points for the vegan thing. That’s looking particularly attractive since the current mayor, Bill de Blasio, gulped down a hamburger at his pandemic press conference to publicize a new vaccine initiative.
Primaries are a hard lift for voters — you can’t simply fall back on your usual party loyalties. People in Virginia, for instance, are probably already pretty clear which party they’ll be voting for in the governor’s race next fall. (The Republican nominee, Glenn Youngkin, waited until he got the nomination before he decided Joe Biden had really been elected president.)
Picking the Democratic nominee should be trickier, but former Gov. Terry McAuliffe seems to have all the advantages. McAuliffe is a super-duper mega-fundraiser and his opposition will be divided among four candidates, three of them Black progressives. Two of them Black progressives named Jennifer.
New York doesn’t get around to picking candidates for governor until next year, but once we get past this mayoral primary, I promise we’re going to be kinda obsessed. Andrew Cuomo — OMG, will he run again? And what about the Republicans? Could it be — Andrew Giuliani?
“Giuliani vs. Cuomo. Holy smokes. Its Muhammad Ali vs. Joe Frazier,” Andrew G. said enthusiastically after he announced. “We can sell tickets at Madison Square Garden.”
People, I know we’re ahead of schedule, but what do you think would be Andrew Giuliani’s main campaign selling point?
A. Close relationship with the nation’s best known Ukraine lobbyist.
B. Work history that demonstrates considerable expertise in playing golf with Donald Trump.
C. Recently employed in a challenging job as a Newsmax contributor.
Do you remember the time Andrew was a student at Duke, and sued the university when he got kicked off the school golf team for throwing an apple into another golfer’s face? Well, that’s for later. Right now we’ve got those primaries, and it truly is a hell of a lot of work to weed through eight Democrats with very similar views on a whole lot of issues. And …
Oh, holy cow. There’s also the race for comptroller. Who do I want to nominate for comptroller — there are 10 Democratic candidates. I would be prepared to whine a lot about this, except that I am painfully aware that if I lived in one part of Queens I would also have to pick among 15 candidates for City Council. Fifteen! The Zoom possibilities are deeply unnerving.
We certainly want open access to all our elections, but honestly, there’s got to be a limit. Recently, turnout by Democrats was low in a special nonpartisan election in suburban Fort Worth, where the Republicans won both slots for the runoff vote. Do you think some of the stay-at-homes were depressed by the fact that they had to choose from 23 candidates?
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Source: Elections - nytimes.com
