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in ElectionsDianne Morales's Top Adviser Joins a Rival Campaign: Maya Wiley's
Hours before the second Democratic debate was set to begin, Ifeoma Ike, the former senior adviser for Dianne Morales’s campaign, announced that she had joined Maya Wiley’s team in the same capacity.“Much love to my former team fighting for all the right things,” read her tweet announcing the change. “20 days left.” She elaborated on her decision in a blog post for The Grio.Ms. Ike and Whitney Hu, Ms. Morales’s campaign manager, resigned last week following a storm of accusations of staff misconduct, discrimination and an unhealthy work environment. The exits were a protest against what they considered the candidate’s mishandling of personnel issues.“I’m proud of the work I’ve done,” wrote Ms. Ike in a tweet last week. “I’m proud of the work we’ve done. I am formally resigning from the campaign as it no longer aligns with my values.”The sudden resignations of the two senior staffers left the Morales staff in chaos. Remaining aides launched a unionization effort for the final weeks of the campaign. But soon after, four employees, all involved in the unionization efforts, were terminated without a clear explanation. The employees who are left have staged a walkout until those staff members are reinstated.Left-leaning voters may find themselves choosing between Ms. Morales and Ms. Wiley on the ballot. In recent months, Ms. Wiley has said that she would rank Ms. Morales second under the city’s ranked-choice voting system, which enables voters to select five candidates in order of preference. After news of the staff implosion, Ms. Wiley declined to say if that was still the case. More
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in ElectionsHow to Watch Tonight's Mayoral Debate
The second Democratic debate, featuring eight candidates for New York City mayor, takes place Wednesday night from 7 to 9 p.m.The second official debate among the eight major Democratic candidates for mayor of New York City takes place Wednesday from 7 to 9 p.m.The candidates set to attend are Eric Adams, Shaun Donovan, Kathryn Garcia, Raymond J. McGuire, Dianne Morales, Scott M. Stringer, Maya Wiley and Andrew Yang.The event comes as the contest moves into its final weeks before the June 22 primary, at a crucial time when the dynamics of the race and voter preferences still appear fluid.The first debate was held virtually, and Wednesday’s in-person session will offer clearer opportunities for the candidates to distinguish themselves with standout moments — and to better land the criticisms of one another that they have ramped up in recent weeks.The state of the race now also looks different in several ways from the last debate.Ms. Garcia, the former sanitation commissioner, has gained traction in the limited polling available, placing her as a front-runner alongside Mr. Yang and Mr. Adams. Other candidates, like Ms. Wiley, are looking to build similar momentum. And the campaign of the most left-leaning candidate in the field, Ms. Morales, is facing internal strife and disillusion.Here are some of the ways you can watch and follow the debate:Reporters from The New York Times will provide commentary and analysis throughout the evening.The first hour of the debate will be televised on WABC Channel 7, with the second hour scheduled on WABC’s streaming platforms and over the air on Channel 7.2. Streams will also be available online from ABC 7 New York and Univision.The debate will also be carried on cable networks including Optimum on Channel 110; Spectrum on Channel 1240; Verizon Fios on Channel 467; and Comcast on Channel 790.NYC Life TV will broadcast the entire debate on Channel 25.1.Bloomberg Radio New York will stream the debate on 1130-AM. Listeners can also tune in to a broadcast on 92.7 FM from the Spanish-language station WQBU-FM.Other streams are expected to be available on YouTube. More
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in ElectionsChristine Quinn: When Will New York Elect a Woman Mayor?
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: A smart, experienced woman walks into an important meeting and can sense her male colleagues immediately looking her up and down to form judgments based on her appearance. She then raises a great idea in the meeting, it’s dismissed or ignored, and then a man in the meeting offers a similar proposal that wins praise.During my 30 years in public service, I found myself in this situation far too often, and I’m certain this would not be the case if my name were Christopher instead of Christine.I wish my story were unique. That is why every time I hear Andrew Yang say that Kathryn Garcia would make a great first deputy mayor or Eric Adams question the civil rights lawyer Maya Wiley’s knowledge of policing, I want to scream.What frustrates me about these comments is not the obvious fact that they are demeaning and erase these candidates’ impressive careers; it’s that history keeps repeating itself. As a candidate for New York’s mayor in 2013, I was ready for my record and my ideas to get withering scrutiny. I didn’t think I’d become the latest woman in New York politics whose gender and personal attributes would be in the spotlight. By contrast, Mr. Yang and Mr. Adams have consistently been at the top of the polls and will likely pay no price for their questionable comments about their female opponents. No matter how many experienced and smart women run for mayor, it feels as if far too many voters are looking only for the best man for the job.I’m sure that there are some who would dismiss New York City’s lack of a female mayor as a strange historical asterisk. After all, we’re the birthplace of the women’s suffrage movement, we were among the first states to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment, and this has been the home of trailblazers like Sojourner Truth, Eleanor Roosevelt, Sonia Sotomayor, Shirley Chisholm, Hillary Clinton, Geraldine Ferraro and Sylvia Rivera, to name a few. But despite this progress, New York City has elected 109 men in a row to lead City Hall, so the three women running for mayor this year do not have the odds on their side.Frankly, no one should be surprised. Women have made important progress as legislators, but when it comes to executive leadership at any level, very few women ever reach the executive mansion. Just 44 women have ever served as governor across the country. What does New York City have in common with Los Angeles, Detroit, Philadelphia and Boston? None of them have ever elected a woman for mayor — and these five cities went through 378 men until Kim Janey took office in March as Boston’s acting mayor.The deck is stacked at the start against women who run for office. Women are less likely to be encouraged to run by party leaders, advocacy groups and donors — which, from my experience, stems from skepticism that women can be competitive. Thanks to generations of pay inequity, women and particularly women of color have lower incomes and net worths than their male rivals to spend on elections.These financial hurdles continue after a woman has decided to start her campaign. Women candidates persistently struggle with fund-raising. In September of 2018, Democratic women running for the U.S. House in 67 of the most competitive districts that year had raised an average of $500,000 less than their male counterparts. According to the most recent filings in New York City’s mayoral race, male candidates are outraising their female counterparts by nearly seven to one. Campaigns need money to survive, so if a woman candidate has to spend the bulk of her time fund-raising to catch up to her rivals, she will have less time to make her case to the public about why she should be elected.And it’s not just that money doesn’t flow to female-led campaigns; it’s also that many women in my generation were brought up with the idea that being aggressive and hard-charging — inherent in fund-raising — is distasteful or negative in women.Beyond the recruitment, cultivation and fund-raising difficulties, there is a unique set of hurdles that plagues women candidates. We are subject to intense public scrutiny and biased coverage that shapes voters’ perceptions.When I ran for mayor, I was warned this could happen. But it still came as a deep disappointment to see the media quickly move from focusing on policy stances to critiquing my appearance, demeanor and even the tone of my voice — as if Ed Koch had been melodious. Every time I wore a new color, smiled or put on nail polish, it was covered with the same vigor as a new policy platform. While men are celebrated for their boldness, women are deemed volatile and too unstable to hold higher office. To be blunt, a woman who displays the qualities that are celebrated in male leaders — strength, ambition, pugnacity — ends up being told, “You’re a bitch.”Women candidates are also held to an impossibly high, difficult to define and even harder to meet standard of likability. It is quite a burden to make 51 percent of people live their lives trying to guess what others want them to be. In my mayoral campaign, I thought that I had to act a certain way so that voters would like me. I twisted myself in knots trying to be less assertive, less of a lesbian and ultimately less of myself. It is a haunting mistake to lose a race when you were not true to yourself, and a choice that I hope no woman running for office in the future is forced to make.Look, I know that when you step into the arena of a political campaign, almost everything about you is fair game. But negative attention can take a painful toll. Throughout our lives, women are judged in a way that men aren’t: From an early age, we’re told implicitly and explicitly that we’re not pretty enough, we’re overweight, we’re too brash, we’re too outspoken. When women take the courageous step to run for office — entering a contest that is completely about judgment — that lifetime of personal criticism comes back tenfold.Thankfully, more and more cracks are being made in the glass ceiling across the country. We finally have a female vice president, and more women are running for elected office than ever before because of the tireless work of organizations like Emily’s List, Run for Something, Eleanor’s Legacy and 21 in ’21 to disrupt the flawed candidate recruitment process.New Yorkers have three accomplished female mayoral candidates to consider in the June 22 Democratic primary, but we first need to stop letting our forward-thinking attitudes blind us from the fact that misogyny affects every facet of our society, including our decisions at the ballot box. Women candidates are not looking for your approval or for preferential treatment. We simply asked to be judged on our merits and not on the basis of our sex.Christine C. Quinn served as New York City Council speaker from 2006 to 2013 and ran for mayor of New York in 2013. She is now the president and C.E.O. of Win, the largest provider of shelter, social services and supportive housing for homeless families in New York City. More
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in ElectionsN.Y.C. Mayor’s Race Tightens Ahead of Crucial In-Person Debate
Democratic hopefuls sharpened attack lines as they tried to draw contrasts on critical issues like policing and the city’s economic recovery.The leading Democratic candidates vying to become New York City’s next mayor veered sharply into attack mode on Tuesday, as they sought to draw distinctions on how they would address critical issues like crime and the city’s economic recovery.The sparring may be a preview of what is expected to be a pivotal face-to-face debate on Wednesday, less than three weeks before the June 22 primary.After months of campaigning in an environment marked by a pandemic-induced apathy, the available polls and fund-raising numbers suggest that increasingly, four candidates make up the top tier of contenders — though many voters remain undecided.For most of the race, the two top competitors appeared to be Andrew Yang, the 2020 presidential candidate, and Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president. But two other candidates have seemed to rise recently: Kathryn Garcia, the former sanitation commissioner, and Maya Wiley, a former counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio, either of whom would be the city’s first female mayor.A breakout moment at Wednesday’s debate could be an important launching pad for candidates who have struggled to achieve broader support, and the matchup appears increasingly likely to be more of a brawl than the first debate, a relatively staid affair punctuated by a few fireworks.With early voting in the primary set to begin on June 12, the mayoral hopefuls on Tuesday seemed to be sharpening their lines of attack for the campaign’s second official debate, but the first to be in person.At an appearance in the Bronx, Mr. Adams, who prides himself on his deep city experience, took direct aim at Mr. Yang, who, until recently, consistently topped limited public polling, though he has no experience in city government or elected office. “Why is he still in this race?” Mr. Adams said, adding that he thought Mr. Yang was “a joke, and it’s not funny anymore.”Across town in Brooklyn, Mr. Yang, who spent months running on a message of renewal and hope and had positioned himself as an above-the-fray front-runner, laced into Mr. Adams in one of his most pointed critiques to date, seeking to cast the race as a choice between a change candidate and those who favor stale, backroom-dealing politics.Andrew Yang attacked one of his leading rivals, Eric Adams, suggesting that he had risen through politics by trading favors.James Estrin/The New York Times“Think about all of the favors that Eric had to trade to get to this point, climbing the ladder over this last number of years, scheming about his run, thinking, ‘Oh, this is going to be my big chance,’” Mr. Yang said, speaking at his campaign office in Bensonhurst. “Eric: Your moment has passed.”The broadsides showcased the deepening rivalries and sharply divergent visions for how to lead the city forward, with the crowded field of candidates differing over ideology and the question of what qualifications matter to become mayor.The last debate was defined by public safety more than any other issue, with candidates battling over whether to add more police to the subways, and Ms. Wiley and Mr. Adams tangling over his record on the policing tactic of stop-and-frisk. Amid a spike in shootings, a spate of anti-Asian and anti-Semitic attacks and clear differences between the candidates on issues of police funding and how to reduce violence, matters of crime and justice may take center stage again on Wednesday.Mr. Yang, Mr. Adams, Ms. Garcia and Raymond J. McGuire, a former Citi executive, are considered to be relative moderates in the liberal field, especially on issues of public safety and dealings with the business community.Ms. Wiley, Scott M. Stringer, the city comptroller, and Dianne Morales, a former nonprofit executive, have competed with each other to emerge as the left-wing standard-bearer in the race, supporting, by varying amounts, sweeping cuts to the Police Department’s budget and staking out a range of other left-wing positions. The former housing secretary Shaun Donovan has also taken several deeply progressive positions while maintaining close ties to the Democratic Party establishment, but has yet to emerge as a favorite of either the donor class or the activist left.The battle for the left has grown increasingly muddled over the last month or so. Mr. Stringer had gained significant traction with key left-wing leaders and organizations, but an allegation of unwanted sexual advances tied to a 2001 campaign, which he has firmly denied, sapped that momentum, though he remains well-funded and maintains the backing of other vital supporters, including some in the labor movement.Ms. Morales’s campaign has been mired in controversy, with staffers accusing her deputies of union-busting and suggesting that her campaign had fallen short of the progressive values it has purported to uphold.On Tuesday, Ms. Wiley made it clear that she hoped to stake out a position as the left’s best shot at the mayoralty and to court progressive voters left reeling by the upheaval in rival campaigns.“I am the progressive candidate that can win this race,” she said at a campaign appearance in Manhattan.As if to underscore the point, the Jim Owles Liberal Democratic Club, an influential progressive group formed by L.G.B.T. activists, said that it was endorsing Ms. Wiley, after rescinding its support for Ms. Morales.Ms. Wiley’s campaign schedule and recent remarks, in many ways, reflected her efforts to build a coalition that includes voters of color across the ideological spectrum, as well as white progressives.She started Tuesday campaigning with Representative Hakeem Jeffries, who is the state’s highest-ranking House Democrat and could become the first Black House speaker. Ms. Wiley then unveiled a new plan to address New York City’s housing affordability crisis, promising to expand rent subsidies to cover more city residents, convert empty hotels into public housing and extend a moratorium on evictions.The housing crisis has become a major issue in the race: Close to half of the city’s renters are considered rent-burdened, meaning that more than 30 percent of their income goes toward rent.Most Democratic candidates have vowed to build more affordable housing units, and all of them seem to agree that the de Blasio administration has not done enough to address the issue.In her remarks, Ms. Wiley suggested that the mayor, her former boss, had not done enough to reduce the high cost of city living. Throughout her campaign, she has tried to tout her experience in City Hall while distancing herself from Mr. de Blasio..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-1jiwgt1{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;margin-bottom:1.25rem;}.css-8o2i8v{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-8o2i8v p{margin-bottom:0;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-1rh1sk1{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-1rh1sk1 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-1rh1sk1 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1rh1sk1 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccc;text-decoration-color:#ccc;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}But on Tuesday, Mr. Yang suggested in his speech that any time spent in Mr. de Blasio’s administration was a résumé item that should be disqualifying.Mr. Yang’s address, which his team billed as his campaign’s “closing message,” was one of his most significant efforts yet to frame himself as a candidate who could reform what he cast as the city’s broken government.Mr. Yang painted a dark picture of New York City, one in which streets would grow grimier, crime would continue to rise and residents would flee unless he were put in charge. The fault, he said, laid with Mr. de Blasio and the career politicians and government workers who enabled him.“People are questioning whether this is where they want to raise their families,” Mr. Yang said.The speech, which took significant aim at Mr. de Blasio’s administration, marked a striking departure in tone from how Mr. Yang has campaigned for much of the race. For months, he positioned himself as an exuberant political outsider who could restore optimism to a city crushed by the coronavirus pandemic and the economic crisis it wrought.But with recent polls showing Mr. Adams and Ms. Garcia gaining ground, Mr. Yang both implicitly and explicitly laced into his leading rivals. Mr. Yang’s harshest words were for Mr. Adams, whom he cast as an ally of Mr. de Blasio’s who would ensure that politics was “business as usual.” Though he did not mention Ms. Garcia during his speech, Mr. Yang criticized the city agencies where she spent her career as ineffective. He repeatedly took fault with dirty streets and piles of trash, areas that Ms. Garcia oversaw as sanitation commissioner before stepping down last year.When later questioned by a reporter, Mr. Yang said that he thought Ms. Garcia’s experience — which he had previously praised so extensively he vowed to hire her — was a mark against her.“I think Kathryn has done a lot for the city,” he said. “But I think that many New Yorkers want to turn the page from the de Blasio administration.”Eric Phillips, a former spokesman for Mr. de Blasio, said he expected to see more attacks on Ms. Garcia in Wednesday’s debate, a reflection of her improving standing in the race following editorial board endorsements from The New York Times and The New York Daily News.Ms. Garcia’s fund-raising for the last reporting period was more than double what she had pulled in during the preceding period, though she lags other top contenders in the money race. “I’m certainly not suggesting she’s going to win, necessarily, but she seems to be the candidate who is actually moving in the polls — at some point, that matters,” he said. But even as the end of the election comes into focus, there is still time for the race to shift, again.“It’s New York City and a lot can happen every day, and does happen every day,” Mr. Phillips said. “When you have a playing field this even, you have this much parity, the race can get jumbled pretty quickly.”Mihir Zaveri and Jeffery C. Mays contributed reporting. More
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in ElectionsNew York City's Post-Covid Recovery
One year after the terrifying first wave of Covid swept the city, the availability of federal aid has helped buoy New York through the pandemic. It’s likely that the city will even see a budget surplus for 2022.Still, New York has been shaken by the pandemic. Unemployment remains high, especially among low-wage workers in the service industries. Many fears remain: Will companies leave the city, no longer wanting to pay high rents if their workers can telecommute? Will property taxes plummet, decimating the city’s revenues? Will restaurants and theaters and bars reopen to the same packed crowds?Viewed through a lens focused on these problems, the city has not faced this much existential uncertainty since the 1970s. As unemployment skyrocketed during last year’s lockdown and as the number of homicides rose, it seemed quite possible that New York might be headed for a prolonged crisis — similar to the one that brought the city to the edge of bankruptcy in 1975.Today, in the midst of a race to pick a new mayor, New York seems at a turning point. Although the uptick in crime has garnered the most attention from the candidates, this obscures the extent to which a larger set of political questions are at stake in the election. Just as in the 1970s, New York faces a daunting challenge in which the old way of organizing the city’s life no longer seems viable, but it is not clear what the new one will be.But there are lessons to be learned from that earlier time of crisis and transformation — and from the social vision that characterized New York City earlier in the 20th century.For much of the post-World War II period, New York City had an ambitious local government. It ran a free system of higher education (and added new campuses over the 1950s and 1960s), an expansive public health department and more than 20 public hospitals. The city’s leaders embraced the idea that local government could play an important role in building a city open to all.The fiscal crisis of the 1970s brought an end to these politics. As the city fell into an economic recession — one that emerged in part as a result of national trends and policies with origins far beyond the five boroughs — it was no longer able to generate the revenues that it needed to sustain the public sector. Bankruptcy seemed likely.It was averted only when the city government agreed to sharp budget cuts in order to obtain federal aid. Tens of thousands of city workers were laid off, class sizes in schools swelled, public hospitals closed, routine maintenance stopped. The city university began to charge tuition for the first time.Today, New York has been able to avoid a fiscal crisis for reasons that go beyond the availability of federal aid. The city’s economy was in better shape before the pandemic than in the 1970s.But the bigger difference between then and now is political. After the fiscal crisis, many of the city’s political and economic leaders insisted that budgetary health depended on finding more ways to reach out to business, while relinquishing its old emphasis on the needs of poor and working-class New Yorkers. As the investment banker and city leader Felix Rohatyn put it, “Business has to be supported and not just tolerated.”In the late 1970s, this approach to city governance led the city to offer Donald Trump (and the Hyatt Corporation) tax abatements worth hundreds of millions of dollars to redevelop the Commodore Hotel near Grand Central Terminal. More recently, it has justified the billions spent on the Hudson Yards complex.The idea that the city must appeal to the affluent has shaped policy in subtler ways as well. For example, the city’s gifted-and-talented program, with its emphasis on testing 4-year-olds — a program that has disproportionately served children of white and Asian backgrounds — seems designed to keep families who might otherwise go to private schools or the suburbs in the public system. The “stop-and-frisk” police strategy (ruled racially discriminatory by a federal judge in 2013) emphasized the comfort of tourists and well-off New Yorkers over the civil rights of young Black and Hispanic ones.These underlying assumptions about city government are being challenged. The experience of the pandemic has called into question the old consensus that a focus on retaining business and the wealthy should guide city policy.As a result, the State Legislature has raised taxes on millionaires, which has helped make it possible for the city to win funding for schools long promised by Albany. The city also plans to use some of its federal money to increase spending on initiatives that will especially affect people who are working-class, middle-class or poor — like public health and early childhood education.New York’s finances remain perilous; sales taxes and hotel taxes are down, though personal income taxes are up, buoyed by the stock market and also by federal stimulus. The federal funds that have supported recovery will not always be there, raising the question of how programs they fund today will be paid for in the future. The city’s own predictions forecast budget shortfalls in a few years, though these may well disappear if growth resumes. (The Independent Budget Office, a watchdog organization, suggests that the gaps are manageable.)But a new mayor will take charge in a city where the terms of political debate are changing fast, and in which more and more New Yorkers are asking what they can expect from their local government. Out of the pandemic, is it possible to build a more equal New York?These concerns have been percolating through the mayoral race, even as they have been overshadowed by fears of crime, scandal, personality and the age-old question of how to define a bodega. But they will be at the heart of the city’s politics over the next four years.Following the near-bankruptcy of the 1970s, the city turned away from its old traditions of social justice. Today, we might take a different set of lessons from that earlier crisis — this time, from the New Yorkers who slept in fire stations and libraries to keep them open. A city belongs to those who are willing to fight for it, whose lives and whose labor make it run.Kim Phillips-Fein, a historian at the Gallatin School of Individualized Study at New York University, is the author, most recently, of “Fear City: New York’s Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of Austerity Politics” and “Invisible Hands: The Businessmen’s Crusade Against the New Deal.”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More