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    New York presses ahead with New Year’s Eve party despite record Covid cases

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    New York presses ahead with New Year’s Eve party despite record Covid cases ‘We’re fighting our way through this,’ says outgoing mayor Bill de Blasio, but decision is in contrast to public health messaging New York City’s leaders are pushing ahead with plans for the annual New Year’s Eve party in Times Square despite record numbers of new Covid infections driven by the Omicron variant.Outgoing Mayor Bill de Blasio, who is set to step down at midnight on Saturday, told NBC’s Today show that pressing ahead with the public celebration would show “that we’re moving forward, and we want to show the world that New York City is fighting our way through this.“It’s really important to not give up in the face of this,” he added.De Blasio has already scaled back celebrations from the “full-strength” celebration he originally approved. Crowds will be limited to 15,000, down from 60,000 pre-pandemic, and everyone who enters must wear a mask.But the decision to press ahead comes in contrast to public health messaging from Washington and decisions in other large, populous cities, including San Francisco and Atlanta, to cancel their events.On Wednesday, White House health advisor Dr Anthony Fauci said he approved of small, at-home New Year’s Eve gatherings among vaccinated and boosted individuals but urged Americans to cancel plans to attend larger gatherings.“If your plans are to go to a 40- to 50-person New Year’s Eve party with all the bells and whistles and everybody hugging and kissing and wishing each other a happy new year, I would strongly recommend that this year we do not do that,” Fauci said at a Covid-19 briefing.De Blasio said Thursday: “Our health-care leadership believes this is the right way to do it.” He said his administration had not held discussions about canceling or reducing the “ball drop” event further.“We’ve got to send a message to the world. New York City is open,” he said, adding that the festivities at Times Square would “show the world that New York City is fighting our way through this”.Incoming mayor Eric Adams cancelled his inauguration party, but is still scheduled to take his oath in Times Square soon after the ball drop. He expressed hope on Thursday that 2022 would be “a new beginning of our resiliency”.New York governor Kathy Hochul released figures on Thursday showing that the city, state and country are all breaking records for newly confirmed Covid-19 infections. New York state has set a new high in the average number of daily reported cases for the last 11 days.Across the state, more than 7,700 are currently hospitalized with the virus and the number is increasing. The city reported a record number of new, confirmed cases – more than 39,590 – on Tuesday, according to New York state figures.“As we approach the New Year it is vitally important that we don’t let our guard down in our fight against the pandemic,” Hochul said. “We have the tools and we know what works – mask up, get vaccinated, get boosted, and exercise caution in large gatherings, especially this weekend.”The decision to press on with the Times Square party has received criticism from other elected officials. Mark Levine, who takes over as Manhattan borough president tonight, called for the event to be cancelled.“We are not doing enough to slow this,” he said on Twitter. “Now is the time to act. Time is of the essence.”That warning comes as one fifth of the city’s police force is out due to virus infections, according to NYPD commissioner Dermot Shea.Kelly Doran, an emergency physician with NYU Langone, tweeted: “Pretty unreal to me that NYC is still holding its big New Year’s Eve bash tomorrow when Covid cases are higher than ever, hospitals are having to call in visiting help & cancel elective surgeries, and FDNY is pleading with the public not to call 911.”As many as 20% of the city’s restaurants and bars are temporarily shuttered and owners report a sharp drop in trade. On Thursday, some of the thousands of tourists visiting the city for New Year said they were not unduly inconvenienced by the sharp rise in Covid infections.“We prefer to go to places where there are less people. On New Year’s eve we will stay in our hotel,” said Antonio Palmeri, visiting from Turin with friends. “But it is our dream to be in New York so we are happy to be here.”Tourists visiting the bronze charging bull on lower Wall Street on Friday said while they were anxious about the number of cases, they wanted to continue enjoying their visits.“The reality is that everyone is fatigued by the pandemic, and at this point everyone knows they should be doing what they can to stay safe, but at this point we’re in a fuck it phase,” said Ben Martin, visiting from Boston.“If the government is telling us to be less careful by cutting quarantine times in half, and we should go back to work, we’re all in the space of like whatever…We don’t have the energy to keep stressing as much.”TopicsNew YorkBill de BlasioUS politicsCoronavirusOmicron variantnewsReuse this content More

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      Eric Adams, former police officer, wins New York mayor’s race

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      New YorkEric Adams, former police officer, wins New York mayor’s raceAdams, who defeated Republican and founder of the Guardian Angels Curtis Sliwa, will become city’s second Black mayor Adam Gabbattin New York@adamgabbattTue 2 Nov 2021 22.33 EDTFirst published on Tue 2 Nov 2021 21.17 EDTFormer police officer Eric Adams will be the next mayor of New York City, after the Democrat defeated Curtis Sliwa in Tuesday’s election.Adams was on course to easily beat Sliwa, the founder of the Guardian Angels, with a lead of 66% to 29% after more than half of projected votes were counted.Adams will now take charge of the largest city in the US in January, when he will be faced with overseeing recovery from the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed more than 34,500 New Yorkers.Adams, 61, becomes only the second Black person to be elected New York mayor, after David Dinkins, who led the city from 1990 to 1993. Adams, who defeated several progressive candidates in the Democratic primary, has pledged to cut government inefficiency and made public safety a central part of his campaign.In a speech, Adams urged unity and told his story as a working-class child who grew up to become mayor. “Tonight, New Yorkers have chosen one of their own,” Adams, said in a victory speech. “I am you.”Adams urged unity. “Today, we take off the intramural jersey and we put on one jersey, Team New York,” he told supporters at a celebration at the New York Marriott. “Tonight is not just a victory over adversity, it is a vindication of faith. It is the proof that the forgotten can be the future.”The centrist politician has been a disappointing choice for many progressives who hoped to see radical reforms in the criminal justice system. Adams has promised to strike a balance between fighting crime and ending racial injustice in law enforcement.After winning a contentious primary, Adams was always the favorite to defeat Sliwa, a Republican, in a city where Democrats outnumber Republicans seven to one. He will replace Bill de Blasio, a fellow Democrat who is limited to two terms as mayor, in January.Adams was born in Brownsville, Brooklyn, in 1960, and spoke during the campaign about his impoverished upbringing. He decided to join the New York City police department in an effort to change the force from within, Adams said, after being beaten by officers when he was 15 years old.He joined the police in 1984 and became a captain before leaving in 2006 to run – successfully – for state senate. During his time in the state legislature he was criticized by the New York inspector general for his role in attempting to bring a casino to a racetrack in Queens, New York City. Adams had accepted campaign contributions from a politically connected group bidding for the gambling franchise.In 2013 Adams was elected to Brooklyn borough president, a power-light position that chiefly involves championing the borough, but one which also boosted Adams’s profile as he weighed a run for mayor.Adams trailed Andrew Yang, a 2020 presidential candidate, in the early months of the Democratic primary, but came through New York’s ranked choice voting to edge out Kathryn Garcia, a former New York City sanitation commissioner, in July.His campaign raised eyebrows over the summer when Adams was forced to answer questions about whether he actually lives in the city he was bidding to lead, given he owns a home in New Jersey and was rarely spotted at the address in Brooklyn where he claims to reside. Adams has insisted he lives in New York City.Sliwa, a talk radio host best known for founding the Guardian Angels, a volunteer crime prevention group, in the 1970s, proved a charismatic if ultimately flawed candidate.He had been a regular presence on New York City’s streets, frequently standing on top of a car-pulled float and spreading his message through a microphone and speaker. Sliwa wore his red beret throughout the campaign, including during the mayoral debates, but struggled to gain much attention in a race where Adams had long been the presumptive winner.TopicsNew YorkUS politicsDemocratsBill de BlasionewsReuse this content More

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      Why New York mayor is ‘second toughest job in US’

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      It was during the administration of Fiorello LaGuardia that the position of New York City mayor became known as the “second toughest job in America”.LaGuardia, New York’s 99th mayor and a man whose name now graces the city’s streets, parks, schools and an airport labeled one of the worst in the country, became regarded as one of the city’s greatest ever leaders, despite facing a collapsing economy, all-powerful crime mobs and civic unrest when he took office in January 1934.When New York City’s next mayor takes office, however, they will face problems on perhaps an even larger scale, with the Covid-19 pandemic having ravaged a city already beset by deep income inequality and facing a reckoning over racial discrimination in policing and governance. The job could prove, once again, to be second only in difficulty to being the occupant of the Oval Office. Despite the challenges, dozens of candidates are running in June’s Democratic mayoral primary – which, given New York City’s left-leaning political makeup, is likely to decide the city’s next leader.The most pressing issue will be leading New York City out of the pandemic. The city was one of the worst hit by Covid-19, and many residents are still haunted by the scenes of April 2020, when ambulance sirens were a near-constant sound as hundreds of people a day succumbed to the virus.In total, more than 32,000 people have died, and in the most densely populated city in the country, the need for a successful, continued rollout of vaccinations will be essential, as will guiding economic and emotional recovery.“In communities across the city Covid is related to severe job loss in industries and occupations. It’s been differentially hard on the everyday workers of the city as opposed to the professional workers. So there’s a lot to be done to heal and revitalize those communities,” John Mollenkopf, distinguished professor of political science at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, said.“All the candidates have lined up policy position papers on what they’ll do [regarding the recovery from the pandemic], but there’s also a kind of symbolic and emotional dimension to it – of going out to the communities and healing their pain, of inspiring them and giving them confidence in the future. That’ll be a very important thing the mayor will do.”The winner of a mayoral election is frequently a reaction to how voters feel about the incumbent – in this case the term-limited Bill de Blasio, whose popularity has waned dramatically since his election in 2013. This year, however, with Covid recovery dominating the election “that dynamic is a lot less at play”, said Neal Kwatra, a Democratic strategist who has been active in New York politics for years.A key issue for the incoming mayor will be schooling, Kwatra said – dealing with the lost year many children have experienced but also the struggle many New Yorkers have faced in balancing work and childcare.“Especially for working-class, middle-class, poor New Yorkers, for whom there is no choice, they have to go to work, they are frontline workers in many of these industries that are helping to bring the city back on its feet,” Kwatra said.“Figuring out how we get our schools open safely and securely for parents for teachers and for students is going to be an enormously important task for the next mayor.”As if wrestling with the 1,700 schools, and more than 1.1 million students, isn’t enough, the city’s next leader will need to breathe life back into a hospitality industry that has been decimated by the pandemic.“The job creation connected to those industries is enormous and significant, so I think part of what the next mayor is going to also have to do is figure out how to send a message to folks that New York is open for business, that New York is safe,” Kwatra said.Looming over any recovery is the racial inequality and police brutality that many New Yorkers or color have faced.In the summer of 2020 Black Lives Matter protests intensified the focus on racial issues, and the Democratic primary could yet yield only the city’s second non-white mayor. New York is still seeking its first non-male leader, with at least six women, two of them women of color, among the main contenders and a non-binary candidate also in the running.The demonstrations of 2020, which brought out tens of thousands of protesters in New York, means the winner of the mayoral race will be under pressure to reimagine law enforcement in New York.“I think it will be very high [on the next mayor’s agenda], but it also will depend on who is ultimately elected,” Kwatra said.There have been demands among the left to defund, either completely or partially, the police, and the next mayor will be expected to take a firm line with the New York police department, the largest force in the country which employs 36,000 officers and 19,000 civilian employees.Some candidates have pledged to reform the NYPD, to various degrees. Dianne Morales a former public school teacher and non-profit executive, has arguably gone furthest. Her website has a section dedicated to “defund the police”, and if elected Morales would reallocate $3bn of the police’s budget to more socially minded services.“As Black men continue to be essentially executed by the state day in and day out in America, it’s impossible for that to not begin to more profoundly affect this mayoral race,” Kwatra said.Maya Wiley, a lawyer and civil rights executive with experience in New York City government, could lean on her experience as chair of the agency responsible for handling complaints about the New York police department. Eric Adams, the current borough president of Brooklyn, who joined the NYPD after being beaten by police aged 15 with the aim of changing the department “from within” has also pledged reform.Andrew Yang, the tech entrepreneur who ran for the US presidency in 2020, has drawn much of the early media attention in the mayoral race, but in recent weeks has also attracted scathing criticism from his rivals, who have attacked his commitment to the city and his governing experience.It is a point they are likely to continue making, as whoever wins will have a battle on their hands as they grapple with the city’s post-pandemic finances.Reuters reported that a net total of 70,000 people left New York City in 2020, but the data is less straightforward. According to location analytics company Unacast, 3.57 million people left the city between 1 January and 7 December , and “some 3.5 million people earning lower average incomes moved into the city during that same period”. Unacast claims that this resulted in a scarcely believable $34bn in lost revenue.As government income has dropped, fears have been raised that the situation could be as dire as that of the financial crisis the city faced in 1975. Back then the city nearly went bankrupt, and leaders attempted to rectify it by introducing swingeing budget cuts.Kimberly K Phillips-Fein, a professor of American history at New York University and author of Fear City: New York’s fiscal crisis and the rise of austerity politics, said the current situation does not rival the fiscal chaos of the 1970s, but said it was important any incoming mayor “recall the dangers of widespread service cuts as a way of addressing fiscal shortfalls”.“At this moment in particular, such cuts could be disastrous. We need more faith in our public sector, not less. We need a coherent plan for reopening schools safely, and a commitment to use resources to accomplish this; we need public health programs that we can trust to protect us,” Phillips-Fein said.“Should budget shortfalls emerge, the city should strive to find ways to address them without stark service cuts. In the 1970s these helped to accelerate political and economic polarization, and the same might well happen today.”The picture does at least look rosier than it did a few months ago, after New York agreed on a $212bn state budget in April. The budget, if signed by Andrew Cuomo, the state’s governor, will increase taxes on the wealthiest residents in New York City, and, Democratic lawmakers say, release money for schools, rent relief and childcare, but the next mayor will inevitably face tough decisions over spending.The mayor’s spending will be fraught with danger as they bid to rectify wealth disparity in the city. The Citizens’ Committee for Children of New York found that income inequality, even pre-pandemic, has grown over the past 10 years, and the issue of affordable housing has been highlighted by the fact that Covid-19 rates were particularly high in neighborhoods already suffering from soaring rents.Data from Streeteasy revealed traditionally lower-income areas like Elmhurst, Corona and Jackson Heights saw dramatic numbers of coronavirus cases, whereas wealthy neighborhoods like Battery Park City and the West Village saw the lowest numbers. In the last six years, according to Streeteasy, it is the former that were already struggling to cope with rising rent.“Between July 2014 and July 2020, rents in the zip codes that would be most affected by Covid-19 rose by 22%. That’s twice the rate of the city overall, where rents grew 11%. In what would turn out to be low-Covid-19 zip codes, rents rose by 10% in the same period,” Streeteasy said.Putting all these issues together, it is clear that the next mayor will have a daunting task ahead in terms of hauling New York City back on track. But as the city reports an encouraging vaccination rate, and as bars, restaurants and sporting venues begin to reopen, there are plenty of people who think reports of the city’s demise are exaggerated.“We’ll need a mayor that understands that the Covid crisis revealed in new ways the underlying class and status divisions in the city,” Mollenkopf said.“But New York is going to come back faster and better than the skeptics think. There’s a reason that the [population] concentration levels were as high as they have been in New York City – very good economic, social and political reasons. And the virus has given that a bruise but it hasn’t really changed anything.“So yes, it’s going to be a challenge. But it’s a great opportunity, also, for the next mayor.” More

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      Andrew Yang leads the New York mayoral race despite missteps. But can he win?

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      Two days before Andrew Yang announced he was running to be New York City’s next mayor, he made a remarkable admission.As Covid-19 ravaged the city – more than 50,000 people have succumbed to the virus – the tech entrepreneur had left town, retreating to his second home north of New York.“We live in a two-bedroom apartment in Manhattan,” Yang told an interviewer to explain his decision. “And so, like, can you imagine trying to have two kids on virtual school in a two-bedroom apartment, and then trying to do work yourself?”Many New Yorkers couldn’t just imagine it, they had lived it – as Yang’s mayoral rivals were quick to point out. But if New York election watchers were expecting that moment to torpedo Yang’s campaign, they were wrong.Despite a slew of other missteps – Yang’s ill-advised plan to crack down on unlicensed street vendors, many of whom are impoverished immigrants, and his enthusiastic National Pet’s Day confession that he had given away his pet dog – Yang has led his Democratic competitors in polling since he announced his candidacy.Yang’s name recognition has undoubtedly helped. The 46-year-old might have failed in his 2020 presidential bid, but along the way he became one of the most talked-about candidates, winning a diehard “Yang Gang” group of supporters through his effervescent personality and his bold commitment to a universal basic income, which would grant $1,000-a-month to US citizens.A New Yorker who doesn’t keep a keen eye on local affairs is still likely to have heard of Yang, but might be less aware of rivals like Eric Adams, Scott Stringer, Maya Wiley and Dianne Morales, who have spent their careers working largely away from the headlines in local New York politics or activism.Yang’s position as frontrunner has put a target on his back, even if “undecided” remains the number one choice for New Yorkers. With the first Democratic primary debates scheduled for 13 May, the race is beginning to heat up, and as New Yorkers begin to pay more attention, Yang has found himself attacked on all sides.First Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president who is polling second, wrongly said Yang had “never held a job in his entire life” and accused him of abandoning New York City at “its darkest moment”. Yang’s campaign said Adams had “crossed a line with his false and reprehensible attacks”.Then, on Monday, Scott Stringer, New York City’s comptroller, slammed Yang’s street vendor crackdown proposal – something Yang has since said he regrets.“We can’t have a leader who tweets first and thinks second,” Stringer, who has also criticized Yang’s transport ideas, said. He added: “Cracking down on street vendors is part of the criminalization of poverty.”At times it has felt like open season on Yang, who has also been criticized by Maya Wiley, who if elected would be New York City’s first female mayor. “New York is not another startup where Andrew Yang can play with other people’s money and fail up,” Wiley said in a scathing statement.Yang’s first startup, which aimed to help celebrities give money to charity, failed, but his involvement with a testing preparation company called Manhattan GMAT was more successful, and made him a millionaire.For all the mudslinging, Yang has plenty going for him. He’s the best known, and an affable, engaging campaigner with a knack for making headlines, even if sometimes for the wrong reasons. He has managed to engage New Yorkers where others have struggled, whether by releasing a campaign rap video – Yang does not rap in it – or pitching pie-in-the-sky ideas like building a casino on New York’s Governors Island, a concept explicitly barred by a federal deed.He has plenty of money too, although the projected $6.5m he raised in the first two months of his campaign is less than the $8m Adams had on hand in mid-March. On Tuesday Politico reported that three political action committees – groups which support, but are officially unconnected to a politician’s campaign – were coalescing behind Yang, aiming to raise $6m for TV ads. At least one other committee has also started fundraising against Yang.So can he win?“My gut instinct is to say no,” John Mollenkopf, distinguished professor of political science at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, said. “He doesn’t really have much of a solid organic connection to constituencies in New York City. He may have a kind of name recognition, a public popularity, [he’s a] fun guy, [and] I think New Yorkers do like people who rock the boat, who are a little bit insouciant in the way they consider the political establishment.”Mollenkopf added: “But that’s not the same thing as sufficiently deep political support to mobilize the kind of forces that are necessary to turn out a majority in a Democratic primary election.”While Yang has dominated the headlines, other candidates have been gobbling up endorsements from key unions and progressive groups. On Wednesday the Working Families party, a progressive party which endorses Democratic candidates, chose Stringer as its first choice, Dianne Morales as second choice, and Maya Wiley as third choice. Yang was not mentioned.Wiley, who previously served as counsel to the current mayor, Bill de Blasio, also won the coveted endorsement of 1199SEIU, the union which represents New York City’s healthcare workers and comprises a majority of women of color. Adams has been endorsed by more than a dozen unions and organizations, as has Stringer.If those groups can turn out members, it could spell trouble for Yang, who will be fearful of repeating his last election bid.In 2020 Yang became one of the most talked about figures in the Democratic presidential primary, but couldn’t translate that into votes. He finished a distant sixth in Iowa and an even more distant eighth in New Hampshire, before dropping out of the race.In New York City mayoral elections, being the frontrunner can be a poisoned chalice. At this stage in 2013, De Blasio was far from being the favorite, while Michael Bloomberg came from behind to win in 2001.To add to the uncertainty, this year the Democratic mayoral candidate will be selected by ranked choice voting for the first time, further muddying the waters. When the Democratic primary takes place on 22 June, Yang will hope to buck the previous trends. More

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      New York mayor calls for investigation after woman accuses Cuomo of sexual harassment

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      New York City’s mayor, Bill de Blasio, has called for an independent investigation into the New York governor, Andrew Cuomo, a day after a former aide accused the governor of sexual harassment.In an essay published in Medium on Wednesday, former aide Lindsey Boylan described several problematic episodes with Cuomo, including an unsolicited kiss in his Manhattan office, an invitation to play strip poker on a government airplane, and an internal email from another aide indicating that the governor considered her a “better looking sister” of a rumored former girlfriend.The governor’s press office responded to the “strip poker” element of Boylan’s allegations on Wednesday with flight records. “Ms Boylan’s claims of inappropriate behavior are quite simply false,” a statement read.In remarks on Thursday, De Blasio, who has a contentious relationship with the governor, issued a call for an investigation into Cuomo’s behavior. “These allegations are really disturbing … This kind of behavior, if it’s true, is just unacceptable. We’ve got to get the truth about this,” he said.Boylan’s allegations come as the governor, who was for much of last year hailed as a hero for his handling of the pandemic, also faces a federal investigation into claims his administration deliberately undercounted the number Covid-related deaths in New York nursing homes.Cuomo, who is facing calls for his resignation, is also in a showdown with angry state legislators from his own Democratic party who are looking to strip him of emergency powers they granted him during the pandemic.Boylan, who is running for Manhattan borough president, went public with allegations of alleged sexual harassment in a series of remarks on Twitter in December but did not provide details.But on Wednesday, she offered details, including describing an incident in 2018 when she said that she and the governor were alone in his Manhattan office. “As I got up to leave and walk toward an open door, he stepped in front of me and kissed me on the lips. I was in shock, but I kept walking,” Boylan wrote.In an earlier incident, in 2016, Boylan wrote that she was emailed by Stephanie Benton, director of the governor’s offices, who suggested she look up images of Lisa Shields – his rumored former girlfriend – because “we could be sisters” and “I was “the better looking sister”.The governor, Boylan added, “began calling me ‘Lisa’ in front of colleagues. It was degrading.” Boylan also wrote that she had complained to friends that Cuomo “would go out of his way to touch me on my lower back, arms and legs”.In her essay, Boylan said: “Governor Andrew Cuomo has created a culture within his administration where sexual harassment and bullying is so pervasive that it is not only condoned but expected.”“His inappropriate behavior toward women,” she continued, “was an affirmation that he liked you, that you must be doing something right. He used intimidation to silence his critics. And if you dared to speak up, you would face consequences.” More

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      The race to replace Bill de Blasio: Who will be New York City's next mayor?

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      On New Year’s Day 2014, the New York City mayor, Bill de Blasio, entered office promising to end the “tale of two cities” with a progressive agenda that he said would address the economic and social inequalities that “threaten to unravel the city we love”.But seven years and a global pandemic later, campaigning to decide the Democrat’s successor is heating up, and the next mayor looks set to inherit a city where experts say those disparities are not only on the rise, but are in a state of crisis.In the wake of coronavirus, which to date has killed more than 25,000 people in the city, New York faces an unemployment rate of 12.1% – almost double that of the US overall – the threat of mass evictions, surging gun violence and burglary, a multibillion-dollar funding gap and an exodus of more than 300,000 residents.“This is undoubtedly the toughest situation any mayor has had to face,” said Kathryn Wylde, the president and CEO of business group the Partnership for New York City. “9/11 was difficult, but it was contained to one geographic area of the city.”While she said the health implications of Covid-19 were becoming better understood, the economic impact is only just unfolding. “So nobody really knows the consequences there, that’s still a moving target and an increasing number.”And yet despite the unprecedented challenges, there is no shortage of people vying to become the next mayor. So far, 32 candidates have filed paperwork to participate in the 2021 race, according to the city’s Campaign Finance Board (CFB).It is a diverse field that includes several former members of the De Blasio administration, a member of Barack Obama’s White House cabinet and a former New York police officer. The former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang has filed paperwork and is reportedly preparing to launch a run in early or mid-January.De Blasio’s term does not officially end until 31 December 2021. But with less than six months to go until the Democratic primaries on 22 June – which, due to the left-leaning politics of the city, will probably decide the winner of November’s election – candidates will not have long to make their case.With industries including retail, tourism, restaurants, culture and entertainment suffering, and a third of the city’s 240,000 small businesses predicted not to reopen, the city’s economic recovery is likely to take centre stage.Jonathan Bowles, the executive director of the Center for an Urban Future said the city was on the verge of a “potential fiscal catastrophe” if it did not get the help it needs from the federal government, which could lead to major cuts in subways, sanitation and parks.This is undoubtedly the toughest situation any mayor has had to faceAlthough the $900bn stimulus bill passed by Congress in December included some funding for public transport, it did not include aid for state and local governments, and New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority still faces an $8bn deficit.“Even as the city is losing all sorts of revenue, tax revenue, the needs for the safety net are growing. People are going hungry, they’re standing in line for soup kitchens, there are more people becoming homeless, so these are massive issues that are facing the city,” said Bowles.“At the same time, the way that the pandemic has changed the economy, with people working from home, it creates all sorts of risks that some people will move out of New York or people that have moved temporarily may not come back.”The next mayor needs to prioritise building back more inclusively, he said, because “too few New Yorkers got ahead during the boom times of the last decade and a lot of those disparities, those racial and ethnic disparities, have been accelerated in this pandemic.”Other issues likely to be on the incoming mayor’s immediate priorities are education, social and racial justice and crime.“The first thing is jobs, schools, crime. That’s it. You get any one of those working, you’ll be better than the current mayor,” said Mitchell Moss, an NYU professor of urban policy and planning. De Blasio, he said, had “clearly checked out” and lost the trust of teachers, police, parents and his own staff.While his successes include implementing free prekindergarten for all, the mayor has faced criticism of his leadership – including his handling of the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter protests following the police killing of George Floyd – and his failed 2020 presidential run. He has also been known to publicly bicker with the New York governor, Andrew Cuomo.Bill Neidhardt, a spokesman for the mayor, said: “Mayor de Blasio just made the single largest move in decades to integrate public schools on the same day as committing to over 20 new NYPD reforms … If someone doesn’t believe that work is important or urgent, then I’m not sure what to tell them.”At the moment, Moss said, it is a “wide open race”. As well as campaigning during a pandemic, candidates will also be faced with educating voters on a new ranked-choice voting system, which critics argue has not been sufficiently explained to voters.They will also need to convince New Yorkers to come out to vote. In 2013, De Blasio won the Democratic mayoral primary – in which only registered Democrats can vote – with the votes of only about 3% of all New Yorkers.Among the frontrunners so far are the city comptroller, Scott Stringer; the Brooklyn borough president, Eric Adams; the lawyer and civil rights activist Maya Wiley; Obama’s housing secretary and the budget director Shaun Donovan; the ex-sanitation commissioner Kathryn Garcia; the former non-profit executive Dianne Morales and the former Citigroup vice-chairman Ray McGuire, who launched his campaign with a video narrated by Spike Lee.Adams, 60, was a New York City police department (NYPD) officer for 22 years and in 2013 was elected Brooklyn’s first Black borough president. He decided to join NYPD after he was beaten by police when he was 15 because he wanted to change it from within.“I know New York City, I’ve had some challenging times, I’ve overcome them and now we need a mayor that can overcome and help people overcome the challenging times that they’re facing,” he said.He does not believe in “defunding” the police, but says police spending could be improved to “move from being reactionary to crime and become proactive”.He wants to improve relations between New Yorkers and its police force by hiring more officers from the city and would also have a “zero tolerance” approach to abusive police officers.He called for ranked choice voting to be postponed because he said the city has failed to educate voters on the new system which in effect will “disenfranchise voters”.Stringer, 60, who has been city comptroller since 2013, said if he became mayor he would “turn the page on the last eight years”.His first order of business, he said, would be to “close our budget gap and get to work on kickstarting the economy in a just and equitable way”.Donovan, 54, said his experience with crises, budget handling and relationships with the Biden administration from his time at the White House would serve him well as mayor. He added: “Building back has to begin with repairing our civic fabric and repairing our quality of life.”He plans to focus on equity and to appoint the city’s first chief equity officer and make New York “the leading equity city in the world”.If Wiley, 55, who was a top counsel to De Blasio and has worked as a legal analyst for NBC News and MSNBC, becomes mayor she would be the first woman and only the second Black person in the role.She said New York needs to learn from the city’s previous crises where the city recovered but did not fix its underlying problems.“For every single time we have had crises in this city, we have recovered – we just haven’t recovered everyone.”Instead, she said, the city should invest its budget “fairly and justly” and in ways that preserve its diversity.She said coronavirus has created a “historic humanitarian crisis” in the city and the subsequent loss of life has caused “unspeakable” trauma.“We are traumatised as a city, we are afraid, we have lost. And that’s why we need a leadership that actually calls us together to pull on our strengths, to pull us together.” More

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