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      Dianne Morales’s N.Y.C. Mayor Endorsement Interview

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      Dianne Morales is a former nonprofit executive who led Phipps Neighborhoods, the social services arm of the affordable housing developer Phipps Houses.This interview with Ms. Morales was conducted by the editorial board of The New York Times on April 26.Read the board’s endorsement for the Democratic mayoral primary here.Kathleen Kingsbury: Thank you so much for joining us. We wanted to start out by asking you if you could spend one or two minutes talking about why you want this job and why you’re the best candidate in the field. Brevity will be appreciated on all these answers, only because we just don’t have enough time with you. But I will let you start from there. I am sure several of my colleagues will have lots of questions for you.Great. So sure. Thank you all for having me. Apologies for the technological difficulties early on. So, I’m running for mayor. Right now, 700,000 of the 1.1 million students who attend our public schools — the families, the majority Black and brown families — do not trust their kids to go back to our public schools. We know also that during the pandemic, some New Yorkers were treated graciously by friendly officers who handed out P.P.E. to them, while at the same time other Black and brown New Yorkers were met with more of the same brutality and unnecessary police force, physical force, that I have been speaking out about. The city boasted of its broadband efforts under the de Blasio administration. And yet, during this pandemic we’ve seen too many young people who actually felt the impact of the design of poverty on our city.[The Times editorial board has written on the need to expand access to broadband, particularly in the context of the pandemic.]And at the same time, food and housing insecurity has existed in the city while Wall Street has flourished over the course of the last 15 months in particular. And 20 percent of our household earners control over 54 percent of the city’s wealth. I am in this race because I think it is time for our city to live up to the rhetoric and the potential of actually being the greatest city in the world. And that means being willing to confront and reconcile and address the deep inequities and injustices that have been perpetuated in the city for far too long.We don’t need reform. We don’t need renewal. What we need is to actually transform our city and finally create a city and build a city together that works for all of us. We know that politics as usual has never worked. And the idea of continuing to do the same thing and expecting a different outcome is in fact the definition of insanity.So what I am proposing is a radically transformative new New York City that I am proposing to rebuild, to build in partnership with the communities that have been left behind for so long, that means women of color, it means the disabled, it means our essential workers, our undocumented workers. We need to build a city that works for them, because we know that throughout this pandemic they have worked for us. So that is why I want this job. I also believe that I have the skills and experience that make me uniquely qualified to do it successfully. So thank you for having me here today. I’m excited to be here for this conversation.Mara Gay: Thank you. It’s a great segue into the next question for you. As mayor, you would be running a city with more than 300,000 employees and a budget larger than that of many small nations. How does running a nonprofit prepare you for this role?Great question. Running a nonprofit prepares me for this role in a lot of different ways. One is, the nonprofit sector is probably the only sector where you know that you are going to be reimbursed from the beginning, that you’re going to be reimbursed at 80 cents on the dollar to the actual costs that it takes to operate and to provide services. I have done that not only successfully, I have closed those budgets.I have grown the program budgets in the organizations that I run. And I have done it without compromising the quality of the services that I’ve provided to the most vulnerable New Yorkers. In that capacity, I have served as an executive of large organizations whose job and mission is to actually serve communities and people directly, to have a direct impact on improving the quality of those people’s lives on a day-to-day basis, not writing policy papers that sit on the shelf, not opining about the impact of one policy or another, actually doing the work, being confronted on a daily basis with the challenges that people are facing and actually having to come up with the solutions and the strategies to help people overcome that. And I have done that successfully.The last thing I’ll say on this is that I also have lived experience that makes it such that I have direct understanding of the frustrations and the challenges that people have to overcome and navigate on a daily basis in order to try to live in dignity and provide for their families. So I think that all of those things in combination, actually, not only as a nonprofit executive, prepare me for this role, but actually uniquely prepare me for this role as opposed to some of my peers in this race.Mara Gay: Thanks. And just very briefly, about how many people have you managed, give or take? And what’s your management style?Sure. So the largest team I’ve managed was probably about 500. My management style is that I’m really good at surrounding myself with people who I think are smarter than me, people who I know sort of offset the different things that I may or may not bring to the table. Very collaborative in terms of trying to solicit people’s ideas and thoughts and also being able to co-create those solutions and strategies.But I think the other thing is the ability to sort of make tough decisions when need be and do it in such a way that even those who are in opposition somewhat begrudgingly come along, because they understand the rationale and the sort of reasoning behind the decision and feel invested in the long-term outcome. I think it’s really important that no matter how big the organization or the city, that every person that is connected and that is doing a job or work related to the city understands the role that they specifically play and the value that they bring. Because I think ultimately everybody just wants to feel valued and wants to feel like they’re doing a good job. No one gets up every day and says: “I don’t care. I don’t really want to do a good job at this.” So making sure that people feel valued and respected and a part of the solution is a critical part of being successful as an executive.Mara Gay: Thanks. Alex?Alex Kingsbury: I’m wondering if you can talk about what you think explains the rise in violent crime and what you would do about it if elected mayor.Sure. So I think we can’t really separate or tease out the rise in crime, the so-called rise in crime from all of the other insecurities that people have experienced over the course of the last 15 months.[With 447 homicides, 2020 was New York’s deadliest year in nearly a decade.]You know, we’re talking about people who have been increasingly housing insecure, people who have been increasingly food insecure, people who have not had access to health care or mental health care. There’s a level of sort of desperation that people are feeling and experiencing that is pushing people over the edge. And I think that there are definitely people that were experiencing, suffering from mental health challenges before the pandemic that have just gotten exacerbated as a result of it.So I think that one of the critical things that needs to be done in order for us to begin to address the increased violence that our communities are experiencing is to actually address our basic human needs, to make sure that everyone has a stable roof over their heads, that everyone has access to and knows where their next meal is coming from. And everybody has access to the basic sort of economic stability that they need. More

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      Kathryn Garcia's N.Y.C. Mayor Endorsement Interview

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      Kathryn Garcia is a longtime civil servant who served as commissioner of New York City’s Sanitation Department.This interview with Ms. Garcia was conducted by the editorial board of The New York Times on April 30.Read the board’s endorsement for the Democratic primary here.Kathleen Kingsbury: Thank you for joining us today. We don’t have very much time together, so we do just want to jump into questions. Because we don’t have very much time, brevity would be very appreciated. So I just wanted to start off by asking you why you want this job — I’m sorry, I’m hearing an echo. I’ll fix that once we start talking — and also why you’re the best candidate in the field. And finally, are you going to ask Andrew Yang to join your team when you’re in City Hall?I’ll do the last one first. I’ve made no plans for specific people in my administration at this time, but we can always have a head cheerleader.[Mr. Yang has said he’d like to be the city’s “evangelist and cheerleader in chief.”]But I would say I’m running for mayor because I fundamentally love this city. And I know that I have the qualifications to get the job done for New Yorkers, with a real vision about how we can make programs work more equitably for people, and to really make sure that we’re treating New Yorkers like customers. I know what that means, and I understand how to get it done, which is why I’m both running and the best candidate for mayor.Mara Gay: Thank you for that. At City Hall, you served as sanitation commissioner. The mayor gave you some of the city’s toughest jobs: food czar during the pandemic, lead abatement at NYCHA. How does your experience as a city manager prepare you to be mayor? I have a follow-up to that, but I’ll leave it there for now.You know, the mayor’s job fundamentally has many pieces. You are the booster for the City of New York — you have to be able to talk about everything that we all love. But you also have to be the leader of 300,000-plus employees and get them to show up and do their work every day. And you have to know where your pitfalls are going to be: How are these agencies going to interact, and how are you going to make them work as a team? That doesn’t come automatically. And that is what I have systematically done, whether or not it was in lead, crossovers between D.O.B. and D.O.H.M.H. and NYCHA to effectively make change.And it’s what I did during Covid for ensuring that we were keeping everyone fed. You know, taxi drivers for delivery, Parks Department employees at the distribution hubs, many contract people, ensuring that we were using caterers to prepare food, putting together those teams and effectively delivering for New Yorkers, because at the end of the day, that is the one person I’m always thinking about. Who’s in the Bronx, who’s in Brooklyn, who’s in Staten Island, who’s in Manhattan, who is happy with the service that they got from the city.Mara Gay: How would you assess the mayor’s management style, and what would you do differently?The mayor is not a manager. The mayor has been a public advocate, and that is where he got his training. I fundamentally manage differently. It is about bringing the smartest people together, listening to them, developing the plan and holding people accountable for delivery. That is very different than what we have today.[Bill de Blasio was the public advocate before he became mayor. The public advocate acts as an ombudsman for the people of the city and a government watchdog. The public advocate is also first in line to become mayor in the event the sitting mayor is incapacitated.]Mara Gay: So as you said just a minute ago, a mayor has to do a lot more than manage the city. Can you talk a little bit about how you would perform the other tasks of mayor as the cheerleader, the negotiator, the chief lobbyist, the ambassador for the city in Albany and D.C.?Certainly. So in some ways, I’ve had microcosms of that role in the roles that I have had. I have had to go to Albany to advocate for funding for NYCHA. I have had to do the hard work of ensuring that the Sanitation Department really felt led and boostered. I have done fun things that promoted New York. I actually got two sanitation workers into Vogue because we made partnerships with a fashion designer to talk about textile waste. Unusual, interesting and a little bit of fun. We have to be able to celebrate New York City and embed all of these different, really talented people into our goals.[The artist and designer Heron Preston began a collaboration with the city’s Department of Sanitation, which was featured in Vogue in 2016.]Jesse Wegman: I want to move to the Police Department. We’ve all watched the last two mayors be essentially steamrolled by their police commissioners. You come out with some interesting and pretty specific plans for the department, including raising the age of recruits and ensuring that officers live in the city. How would your overall approach be different and make sure that the department is accountable both to the mayor and to the people of New York? And specifically, how would you deal with the New York police union?[Mr. de Blasio had a fraught relationship with the Police Department, and both he and former Mayor Michael Bloomberg adopted a hands-off approach to their commissioners.]N.Y.P.D. is made up of officers who are actually — or should be — residents of New York but are actually just people. We have a real opportunity at this moment — we have upper-level management leaving in droves — to formally reshape this entire organization. But I hold my people accountable. I don’t understand why the current mayor doesn’t hold his police commissioner accountable for delivering.When we think about what needs to transact, we have to make it so that discipline is really transparent. Otherwise, you are not going to rebuild trust with communities. You know one of the things that’s true? There are five deputy assistant district attorneys. There are U.S. attorneys. We sort of outsource discipline away from the police commissioner, as well as the chiefs. That is where it needs to be. Fundamentally, the mayor has to hold them accountable for doing that.And when it comes to the union, you sit down with labor. I sit down with labor. I am very open to labor issues. I don’t get steamrolled by labor. Nobody has ever accused the Teamsters of being pushovers. I have been able to work incredibly effectively with them to make sure we got the job done.Jesse Wegman: I think the steamrolling was done primarily by the commissioner within the last two administrations. Can you tell us what kind of commissioner you would choose or even give us some names of potential candidates?I am not picking a candidate now. It feels like that could jinx the election by presuming that I already have the title. I know I need to go ask people for their vote, but I do have some fundamental characteristics that I need from a police commissioner.I need to know that they are completely on board with the agenda that I have set and been very clear about; that they have the management chops to get it done; that they are prepared for culture change, which means that you’re going to have to take some tough stances; and that they understand that I will work with them to make that happen. But I am not necessarily looking for just a cop’s cop, which is what others seem to be choosing over and over again.Nick Fox: In an online Q. and A. you said the police commissioner should have the final say on disciplining officers. Why? Commissioners don’t have a very good record on holding officers accountable for misconduct.[Ms. Garcia, splitting from some of her rival candidates, has said, “My police commissioner would be strictly accountable to me on discipline decisions, and I would hire someone I trust to have final authority on that decision.”]The past commissioners have not had a very good track record of holding people accountable on discipline. But if you don’t make them responsible for discipline, then you’re giving them an out — that they are not fundamentally responsible for managing their force and for holding the chain of command completely responsible for ensuring that discipline is maintained. More

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      Maya Wiley's N.Y.C. Mayor Endorsement Interview

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      Maya Wiley is a civil rights lawyer who served as counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio and oversaw the city’s Civilian Complaint Review Board.This interview with Ms. Wiley was conducted by the editorial board of The New York Times on April 28.Read the board’s endorsement for the Democratic primary here.Kathleen Kingsbury: Thank you so much for joining us. I wanted to kick off by just asking you why you want this job and why you think you’re the best candidate for it. Because we only have 30 minutes together, and we have so much ground to cover, brevity would be really appreciated in all your answers.You’re asking a lawyer for brevity, but I’ll work on that. Well, look, the short answer is, you know, as the child of civil rights activists, as someone who has spent my entire career working on racial justice and equity issues, as a litigator, as someone who lobbied Congress, founded a not-for-profit, worked in the foundation world, worked in government, and most importantly, as a mom — I’ve got two daughters born and raised here.We’ve been watching the pandemic that is Covid rip the curtains back, deepen and worsen the pandemics that preceded it, which are the pandemics that were an affordability crisis, something we’ve been grappling with for a long time — in more than one mayoral administration, but not as successfully as we need it to be — and grappling with structural racism, which is what I call colorblind racism, and the policy decisions that continue to ensure that when a pandemic like Covid hits, 88 percent of the people who die are in communities of color. And that’s not a surprise. There’s not much that we saw in Covid, besides its devastation and the trauma of it, that should surprise us, in the inequities of it and in how that also devastated all of us.[Data released by the city showed that in the early weeks of the pandemic in New York, Covid-19 was killing Black and Hispanic New Yorkers at twice the rate of white people.]So from my vantage point, as someone who spent my entire life trying to make change and having some successes, but watching four years of Donald Trump rolling it back … and the necessity of cities to be much bolder, much more transformational, but lean hard into solving the pandemics once and for all. Because, you know, we always recover in New York City. We recover from every crisis. The question is, are we going to recover all of us?And that’s why I’m running. That’s the incredible opportunity and possibility I see despite this devastating moment. And that’s actually what I’ve always done, including at the senior levels of city government. So that’s why I’m running.Kathleen Kingsbury: Thank you. My colleagues, weigh in. Go ahead, Mara.Mara Gay: Thanks. So as mayor, you would be running a city of more than 300,000 employees with a budget larger than that of many small nations. How does your substantial experience as a civil rights attorney, former counsel to the mayor and head of the Civilian Complaint Review Board prepare you for this role? And then how would you assess the mayor’s management style and what would you do differently if elected?Thank you for that important question, because I think what we have to understand about what management looks like in this historic moment is it has to be change management. This isn’t “we want the trains to run on time.” We need the trains to run on time, and in fact, they should be 24/7. We want to make sure the trash is getting picked up and it’s getting picked up in every neighborhood. You know, these are deeply important quality-of-life issues.There are also issues about opportunity and getting to where we need to go and all the other things we need to do as a city government. But it’s also about how we solve what has been broken in the city before Covid, what’s been fast tracked, as I said, deepened, in terms of the crisis we’re in.And that means change management that understands, as I have, because I had the opportunity to do it in city government, of seeing just where the resources are — like I did when we were working on universal broadband and the mayor said, “That’s yours, Maya.” And I thought, great, because I’ve been working on it as a civil rights activist and racial justice advocate. I came into City Hall and I said, “You know what, I want to do it.” And I have no idea how, because if we’re really being honest with ourselves, if we’re being transformational, we don’t. There’s no such thing called the Universal Broadband Agency in government.[The Times editorial board has written on the urgent need to expand access to broadband, noting that particularly in the context of the pandemic, access to broadband is a civil rights issue.]So it’s about finding the resources that government has. That means looking at the budget, both the capital construction budget and the expense and revenue budget. It’s looking at where and how we’re spending and how we spend more wisely. That’s a big part of … looking at starting that budget process in January is not just looking at it as a straight “give me your budget and I’ll respond,” but actually looking at it strategically in terms of where and how to invest the resources we have.I put a $70 million budget line in the capital construction budget. The city never had that before for broadband. I also pulled together agencies, four different agencies, to get them working together as partners in order to get every single unit in the Queensbridge Houses free broadband. Now, this was all before Covid. I did something similar with women and minority-owned business enterprise contracts, getting sanctuary city legislation, the first one, unstuck on the executive side of government — it was not stuck on the City Council side.[A sanctuary city refers to one that limits the role of local law enforcement agencies and officers in enforcing federal immigration laws. New York City, which already had strong sanctuary city policies, expanded them in October 2017, further limiting the city’s cooperation with federal immigration enforcement efforts.] More

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      Most of Scott Stringer's Supporters Have Fled. Not the Teachers' Union

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      The United Federation of Teachers is boosting Mr. Stringer’s embattled campaign with an advertising blitz. In the weeks since a former campaign volunteer accused Scott M. Stringer of sexual misconduct, many of the Democratic mayoral candidate’s most crucial supporters, including the Working Families Party and a phalanx of progressive politicians, have abandoned his campaign. But powerful teachers’ unions are not only sticking with Mr. Stringer, the city comptroller — they are, starting Tuesday, offering a much-needed boost to his embattled campaign in the form of a multimillion-dollar advertising blitz.The American Federation of Teachers, the country’s second-largest teachers’ union, and the United Federation of Teachers, its large and influential New York City chapter, are the primary backers of the $4 million television and digital advertising effort. The ads and mailers will be paid for by NY 4 Kids, a super PAC created to “keep the issues affecting our schools, kids and teachers front and center in this election,” according to a release from the group. The A.F.T. has contributed $1 million so far, and the PAC has commitments for the remaining $3 million. The effort by the PAC, which is primarily funded by the unions, will more than triple the Stringer campaign’s own spending on ads, which has totaled about $1.3 million so far. The unions make up an essential part of the coalition that is still standing with Mr. Stringer before the Democratic primary in June. But their continued support for the candidate amounts to a very risky political bet for the U.F.T. in particular, which has failed to back a winning candidate for mayor since 1989. The union has significant power over key education decisions, but its influence in the city’s electoral politics could be weakened considerably if it once again bets on the wrong candidate. That has not deterred Randi Weingarten, the president of the A.F.T. and one of the most powerful union leaders in the country, from defending Mr. Stringer. On Sunday, she stood with the candidate and Representative Jerrold Nadler on Mr. Stringer’s home turf, the Upper West Side, to praise his record as a longtime local politician. “I’m very proud of that endorsement because of what Scott has done and what he will do,” said Ms. Weingarten, the former president of the U.F.T. “I think he’ll be a great mayor.”“Am I troubled by the allegations? Of course,” she said, adding, “I’m also a unionist who has dealt with false allegations.”Tyrone Stevens, a spokesman for Mr. Stringer, said the campaign was “thrilled to have the ongoing support of champions for public education, because they know the next mayor needs to be ready on day one to invest in our children and bring our schools back stronger than ever.”Some parents and mayoral candidates have accused the union of slowing the pace of school reopenings in New York over the last year. But with the majority of families still choosing to learn remotely, there is no evidence of a significant public backlash against the union. Other major unions have endorsed Mr. Stringer’s rivals, with several lining up behind Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president. But the U.F.T. backed Mr. Stringer, a longtime ally of the union, last month. When the U.F.T. president, Michael Mulgrew, was asked whether his 200,000-member union would support whoever the Democratic nominee was, he replied that Mr. Stringer would in fact be the nominee.The United Federation of Teachers endorsed Scott Stringer, right, in April.Benjamin Norman for The New York TimesThat was a cheekily confident projection even then, when limited public polling showed Mr. Stringer regularly polling third or fourth in the race. But just a week after the U.F.T. endorsement, Jean Kim, a political lobbyist who worked on a 2001 campaign for Mr. Stringer, said the candidate groped her on several occasions during that race. Mr. Stringer has vehemently denied the allegations, and has said that he and Ms. Kim had a brief, consensual relationship. Mr. Stringer has been competing for the left flank of the city’s electorate against Maya Wiley, a former counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio, and Dianne Morales, a former nonprofit leader, both of whom have picked up endorsements and energy from progressive groups in the wake of Ms. Kim’s allegations. In a recent interview with Bloomberg News, Mr. Mulgrew said his union was still backing Mr. Stringer in part because the accusations have not been proven. “One reason why unions got formed is that people get treated unfairly,” Mr. Mulgrew said. “There are lots of allegations all the time in the work we do.”Jeffery C. Mays contributed reporting. More

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      Shaun Donovan's N.Y.C. Mayor Endorsement Interview

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      Shaun Donovan served as housing secretary and budget director under President Barack Obama and as housing commissioner under Mayor Michael Bloomberg.This interview with Mr. Donovan was conducted by the editorial board of The New York Times on April 21.Read the board’s endorsement for the Democratic mayoral primary here.Kathleen Kingsbury: Secretary Donovan, good to see you. You are muted.I’m a bit of a rookie on Google Meet.Kathleen Kingsbury: Thank you so much for being with us. We only have a limited time together, so if you don’t mind, I’m just going to jump right in. My first question will give you a chance to tell us a little bit more about yourself, which is, why do you want this job? Why would you be better than anyone else in the field of candidates?Well, thank you all for having me today, and it’s a real pleasure to be with you even in this format. I wish we were meeting at The New York Times. Look, I fundamentally believe that this city is in a moment of reckoning and that this is the most important mayoral election of our lifetimes. Our city can either slide backward or rebound from this crisis and tragedy. And like every disaster, this one has not affected all of us the same.For many, there’s a palpable sense of excitement that our city is coming back, and I will build on that as mayor. But for millions of others, profound loss remains. Thirty thousand of our neighbors are gone and half a million more are out of work. There are millions of others who are struggling just to pay the rent and to put food on the table, and so many of those people were struggling even before this crisis hit.We need a mayor who can bind up our wounds and move this city forward, a mayor who understands that once the health pandemic is behind us, the economic and equity pandemics will still be in front of us. And I believe there is only one candidate who has actually seen a crisis like this, led through it and knows how to bring our entire city back. We have to get this decision right. We need a mayor who will not just repair and rebuild this city, but reimagine it as a city that works for everyone.Now, I became a public servant because I grew up in the city at a different time of crisis. As a child, I saw homelessness exploding on our streets. I saw neighborhoods like the South Bronx and central Brooklyn crumbling, even burning to the ground. And it made me angry and made me ask, how can we allow our neighbors to sleep on our streets, our communities to crumble?So I went to work. I started volunteering at a homeless shelter. In college, I interned for the National Coalition for the Homeless, and I learned about a remarkable leader in Brownsville and East New York in Brooklyn named Bishop Johnny Ray Youngblood, who was building thousands of Nehemiah homes to rebuild his community, to build Black and brown wealth. When I finished school, I came to him and I said, ‘Put me to work,’ and I went to a nonprofit that was working directly with him to rebuild those communities. That began a 30-year career on the front lines of housing and homelessness, of economic and racial justice, a career that’s taught me again and again what it means to lead through crisis.In fact — I try not to take it personally — a crisis seems to follow me wherever I go in public service. I was housing commissioner for Mayor Bloomberg in this city in the wake of 9/11. I was housing secretary in the midst of the worst housing crisis of our lifetimes, when Sandy hit our shores. President Obama asked me to lead the entire federal recovery effort, and then he asked me to lead the $4 trillion federal budget. Just weeks later, Ebola hit and later Zika, and I ended up side by side in the Situation Room with Dr. Fauci, with all our military leaders, with President Obama and then-Vice President Biden, making sure that emerging global health threats didn’t become pandemics that cost tens of thousands of our neighbors their lives.So I know what it means to lead through crisis, and I know that those who are the most vulnerable before a crisis are always hurt the worst by it. I was angry, but not surprised, that Black and brown communities have been hurt the worst. And that’s why I’ve put the most vulnerable, and equity, at the forefront of all of my work, whether it’s leading the strategy to dramatically reduce homelessness around this country, making sure by giving real meaning to the Fair Housing Act of 1968 that Black and brown people could live wherever they choose, becoming the first cabinet secretary in history to endorse marriage equality. My work on climate change and immigration and so many other issues.In fact, I believe I’m the real progressive in this race because I’ve made the most progress on issues of inequality. And that’s why I put those issues at the forefront of my campaign with the biggest, boldest ideas to make sure that our neighborhoods don’t determine our futures, by creating 15-minute neighborhoods ——Mara Gay: In fact, I want to ask you about that, if you give me a chance. You have some of the best ideas in this race: transforming every neighborhood in New York into a 15-minute neighborhood — which, for my colleagues, is actually an idea that came from Hidalgo, from Paris — that every New Yorker would have good health care, school, a coffee shop within a 15-minute walk; an equity bonds plan to give every kid $1,000 when they’re born that would grow; speeding the closure of plants and subsidizing air-conditioners to low-income communities in harm’s way. As mayor, how would you turn these ideas into reality, and can you talk a little bit about your management style?So. Mara, all credit due, Mayor Hidalgo also borrowed that from, I think, the mayor of Vancouver originally. Look, just to make a larger point, one of the things about me that’s different from anybody in this race is I’ve worked with mayors across the country and across the globe. If we really want to be the leading, most innovative city in the world, I think we need to look at other places and make sure we’re building on those.You know, what I would say is, first, don’t take my word for it. Look at my record. I’ve actually been able to make big change. It would start, for me, by ensuring that we create the city’s first-ever chief equity officer, reporting directly to the mayor, who has jurisdiction over every single agency and is really driving equity through everything that the city does. We need a mayor who understands every issue is an issue of equity, and that would be central to creating real accountability on those plans.I would also just say that I’m a leader who really understands how to make government work across different agencies. One of the fundamental problems we’ve seen these last few years is a lack of collaboration. Just to pick a very specific example, on homelessness: We try to solve homelessness with homelessness programs when, in fact, the way we made progress in the federal government was to bring together every agency that touches the issue, whether it’s substance abuse, criminal justice — everybody needs to be at the table — and we need to create real accountability through data, holding folks accountable and making sure that we’re doing more of what actually works and less of what doesn’t.Actually, David Brooks wrote a piece about the work we did on HUDStat and homelessness that got to the center of the way I led on those issues. Finally, I think I’m the only candidate that has that broad experience to make these ideas real.Kathleen Kingsbury: I’m glad you brought up homelessness and housing in general. You were the housing commissioner under Bloomberg at a time when we saw the cost of housing in this city skyrocket, and tens of thousands of people became homeless. Can you talk a little bit about what you think went wrong there and why we saw some of those things happen?Katie, just to be specific, if you go back and look at what happened during my time leading housing in this city, I think what you’ll see is that homelessness actually went down rather than up. The big increase happened later and accelerated under de Blasio. I would also say that the issue that we saw during my time was the emergence of the mortgage crisis, and actually the challenges around that became more and more prominent. I led the country with the very first response to that, the Center for New York City Neighborhoods, that really did create innovative solutions with housing counseling, with mortgage assistance, with legal assistance.And so I do believe if you look at my record, you’ll see a real record of creating innovative solutions on housing, and that we did dramatically accelerate the creation of affordable housing in the city. More

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      The Accusations Against Scott Stringer

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      [Want to get New York Today by email? Here’s the sign-up.]It’s Monday. Weather: Chance of an early sprinkle, then gradually clearing. High in the mid-60s. Alternate-side parking: In effect until Thursday (Solemnity of the Ascension and Eid al-Fitr). Sarah Blesener for The New York TimesLess than two weeks ago, the mayoral campaign of Scott M. Stringer, the New York City comptroller, appeared to be on the upswing.But on April 28, a woman who had worked unpaid on Mr. Stringer’s unsuccessful 2001 campaign for public advocate, Jean Kim, accused him of sexual misconduct, upending the mayor’s race some eight weeks before the June 22 primary.During an interview with my colleague Katie Glueck last week, Ms. Kim, shown above, described several advances that she said were unwanted.[Mr. Stringer has denied allegations that he misused his position of power with Ms. Kim.]The allegationsMs. Kim moved to New York in 1998, she said, and later became active in a political club, the Community Free Democrats, that Mr. Stringer was also involved in. In 2001, she took an unpaid role in Mr. Stringer’s unsuccessful campaign for public advocate.In a cab that summer, Ms. Kim said, Mr. Stringer grazed her knee. He touched her leg again — it was “a little bit more insistent”— a few weeks later as they shared another cab, she said.About a week before the scheduled primary in September, Ms. Kim said, Mr. Stringer kissed her at a bar. Ms. Kim said she tensed up, then Mr. Stringer kissed her again more passionately.Days later, Ms. Kim said, she shared one more cab ride with Mr. Stringer, during which he made more advances, asking why she would not have sex with him.“He constantly reminded me of his power by saying things like, ‘You want me to make a phone call for you to change your life,’ ‘You want me to make you the first Asian district leader,’” Ms. Kim said. “There was no doubt in my mind that he was powerful and he could make or break me.”The responseMr. Stringer has denied making unwanted sexual advances.He said he never suggested he could give Ms. Kim a political position.“Virtually every one of my friends volunteered on the campaign,” Mr. Stringer said in a statement. “There was no sense in which they were subordinates. While I obviously can’t speak to how any individual felt, I don’t think most people who were part of our social circle would say there was a power dynamic at play.”Mr. Stringer said Ms. Kim’s description of unwanted advances amounted to “a fundamental distortion of what happened.”He offered an account of what he has said was a consensual relationship.“I would estimate that on at least a dozen occasions over four to five months, an evening out ended with us kissing,” he said.Ms. Kim denied that she and Mr. Stringer ever had a consensual relationship.From The TimesA Photographer Captures ‘Generation Covid’No Scrum for Seats. No Quiet-Car Brawls. Is This Really My Commute?After Times Square Shooting, Adams and Yang Stress Support for N.Y.P.D.Who’s the ‘Comeback’ Candidate? 5 Takeaways from the Mayor’s Race.Want more news? Check out our full coverage.The Mini Crossword: Here is today’s puzzle.What we’re readingA right-wing Brooklyn radio host running for New York City Council pleaded guilty to directing a crowd to attack a journalist. [Gothamist]The head of New York City Transit said she expected that the subways will be safer after ridership numbers rise. [N.Y. Post]A 28-year-old man walked into a police station and confessed to killing his mother in her Queens home, police said. [NBC New York].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-1dg6kl4{margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:15px;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}.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;}And finally: The New York Philharmonic’s new reality The Times’s Zachary Woolfe writes:There are no seats at the moment in David Geffen Hall, the New York Philharmonic’s home at Lincoln Center. There is no lobby, no stage, no stairs. The theater — currently in the midst of a long-delayed renovation — is a raw shell of concrete and steel; the only music within it, the shouts of workers and the deafening screech of metal being sawed.If some part of us believes that life over the past 14 months has been waiting to be resumed more or less intact — on ice, just needing a thaw — the gutted Geffen speaks to the other part, the sense that things have fundamentally changed, or should.Late Friday afternoon, the Philharmonic was in an empty lot at Domino Park, on the Brooklyn waterfront just north of the Williamsburg Bridge, making a rough, modest sketch of some of those changes. As construction continues at its hall, the orchestra has produced a sequel to its mobile Bandwagon program, an avatar of a more nimble, responsive, community-connected organization. With performances now staged from a shipping container, it will travel over the remaining weekends of May for three-day stints in parks in Upper Manhattan, the Bronx and Queens.This reflects a new sense of how our large legacy classical arts institutions should interact with their cities. Those interactions are not new for opera companies and orchestras, but they’ve often had a permeating sense of noblesse oblige: The big symphony deigns to play at an acoustically subpar neighborhood high school or community center, and expects community organizations to bring in a local (read: diverse) audience. (This comes complete with a moralizing whiff of the “elevating power of classical music” and such.)It’s Monday — hit the road.Metropolitan Diary: Gaming away Dear Diary:I was on a downtown No. 1. The young man across from me was furiously playing a game on his phone and didn’t notice when one of his gloves dropped to the floor.An older man who was sitting next to the young man picked up the glove and held it out to him, but he was so absorbed in his game that he still didn’t notice.The older man balanced the glove on the young man’s knee. A few minutes later, it fell to the floor again and, again, he didn’t notice.By this time, the older man was standing by the doors and waiting to exit the train. He leaned toward the young man.“Your glove is on the floor,” he said loudly while pointing.Without looking up from his screen, the young man reached down and picked up the glove.“Thank you,” he said, eyes still on the screen. “Appreciate it.”The older man looked toward me, rolled his eyes and smiled.— Elisabeth LadensonNew York Today is published weekdays around 6 a.m. Sign up here to get it by email. You can also find it at nytoday.com.What would you like to see more (or less) of? Email us: nytoday@nytimes.com. More

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      After Times Square Shooting, Adams and Yang Stress Support for N.Y.P.D.

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      Eric Adams and Andrew Yang, among the front-runners in the New York City mayor’s race, said the shooting underlined the importance of public safety.Within hours of a shooting in Times Square that left three bystanders, including a child, wounded, two news conferences were held near the crime scene: one by the Police Department, one by an elected official.That official was not Mayor Bill de Blasio; the mayor, who is in his last year in office, does not typically appear at shootings where no one has died, a City Hall aide said. The official was Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president who is running to succeed Mr. de Blasio.The symbolism of the moment, and its political upsides, were not lost on Mr. Adams and a leading rival, Andrew Yang, both political moderates. Mr. Yang, the former presidential candidate, held a news conference in Times Square on Sunday morning. Not to be outdone, or even matched, Mr. Adams book-ended Mr. Yang’s appearance with a second Times Square visit on Sunday afternoon.Both men are running as Democrats in a primary that is likely to determine the next mayor of New York City and is just six weeks away. Though many New Yorkers have yet to pay attention to the race, recent polling suggests Mr. Yang and Mr. Adams are vying for first place.The shooting near Seventh Avenue and West 45th Street wounded a 4-year-old girl from Brooklyn in the leg. She was shopping for toys with her family. A 23-year-old Rhode Island tourist who had been hoping to visit the Statue of Liberty was also shot in the leg, and a 43-year-old woman from New Jersey was shot in the foot. The victims did not know each other, the police said.A police official identified the suspect in the shooting as Farrakhan Muhammad, 32, a seller of CDs, and said he had been shooting at his brother, who was not hit. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Mr. Muhammad had prior arrests in incidents in Midtown involving making threats in 2018 and grabbing a man by the neck and throwing him into a garbage can in 2020. It was not immediately clear how the cases were resolved.The shooting was frightening. But from a political perspective, it also seemed tailor-made for moderate mayoral candidates like Mr. Adams and Mr. Yang, who are eager to highlight their rejection of defunding the police, a principle that continues to animate the party’s left. In both candidates’ remarks, they also stressed their belief that New York City’s economy could not recover without public safety.“We’re not going to recover as a city if we turn back time and see an increase in violence, particularly gun violence,” said Mr. Adams, in a blue windbreaker with his name on it.Mr. Yang, who lives nearby, spoke on Mother’s Day, with his wife, Evelyn, in tow.At a Times Square news conference on Sunday, Andrew Yang said that “New York City cannot afford to defund the police.”Ed Jones/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images“My fellow New Yorkers, if there’s one thing I want to say to you it is this: Nothing works in our city without public safety, and for public safety, we need the police,” Mr. Yang said. “My message to the N.Y.P.D. is this: New York needs you. Your city needs you.”“The truth is that New York City cannot afford to defund the police,” he added.Times Square represents the commercial and tourist heart of Manhattan, itself the financial capital of New York City and the nation. The shooting comes as the city is revving up its marketing engine, with the goal of reviving New York City’s tourist trade.In the year before the pandemic, 66.6 million tourists came to town, giving rise to 400,000 tourism-related jobs and an estimated economic impact of $70 billion. Last year, only 22 million tourists came to New York City, and officials estimate it will take years for the industry to recover.The police say more than 460 people have been shot this year in New York City as of May 2, compared with 259 last year and 239 in 2019 at the same point. Mr. de Blasio routinely attributes the rise in shootings to the societal upheaval wrought by the pandemic, which has created mass unemployment, and also blames a slowdown in the court system. Dermot F. Shea, Mr. de Blasio’s police commissioner, tends to blame recent statewide criminal justice reforms, which he says have made it harder to keep those charged with criminal offenses in jail..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-1dg6kl4{margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:15px;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}.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;}Both Mr. Adams and Mr. Yang took the opportunity to highlight their policing agendas, which include reimagining plainclothes anti-violence units. Mr. de Blasio disbanded his plainclothes anti-crime unit, which had been involved in many police shootings, last year. Both also touted their commitment to criminal justice reform.Mr. Yang said he would ensure his plainclothes unit was populated by better-trained officers with clean records. Mr. Adams has said he would hire officers for the unit with the skills and temperament for the job.Other moderate candidates, like the former sanitation commissioner Kathryn Garcia and the former Citigroup executive Raymond J. McGuire, chimed in with similar themes — that public safety and strong policing need not come at the expense of criminal justice reform.Candidates further to the left talked about the importance of finding alternatives to traditional policing.At a press availability outside a church in Brooklyn, Maya Wiley, a former counsel to Mr. de Blasio who has embraced some of the defund movement’s goals, said she would invest in “trauma-informed” mental health care and summer youth employment programs.Dianne Morales, a nonprofit executive who wants to more than halve the Police Department’s operating budget, said on Twitter that “we need bigger solutions than the police.”The incident prompted Bernard B. Kerik, the former police commissioner under Rudolph W. Giuliani, to suggest that an electoral triumph by either Ms. Wiley, who is Black, or Ms. Morales, who is Afro-Latina, would mean a “catastrophic implosion” for New York City.Ms. Wiley did not take kindly to the remark.“Giuliani’s ex-police commissioner — a convicted fraudster — isn’t even being subtle with a racist trope that Black women would unleash a crime wave if elected,” Ms. Wiley responded. “Don’t get it twisted — as mayor, I’ll move our city forward with an economy that works for all and safe & just streets.”Ashley Southall More

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      Jean Kim Details Harassment Claims Against Scott Stringer

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      Jean Kim said in an interview that Mr. Stringer, a Democratic candidate for mayor, had abused a position of power to make unwanted advances. He has denied her allegations.He was an ambitious state assemblyman and a rising star in the liberal hothouse of Upper West Side politics. She was a New York newcomer, born in South Korea, raised in Ohio and eager to break into the city’s thriving Democratic scene.The two — Scott M. Stringer and Jean Kim — would eventually play central roles in this year’s New York City mayor’s race. But their paths first intersected more than 20 years ago, initially at political events, and then more intensely as Mr. Stringer ran an unsuccessful campaign for public advocate in 2001.That summer and fall, Ms. Kim, working unpaid on his campaign, regularly attended Mr. Stringer’s events. They socialized as well, gathering over drinks with other young activists at Upper West Side bars like Merchants. On at least one occasion, there was a kiss.On this much, Mr. Stringer and Ms. Kim largely agree. But their accounts of the nature of their relationship diverge sharply from there, as do their views of the power dynamics at play. The clashing narratives have thrown Mr. Stringer’s mayoral campaign into crisis after Ms. Kim accused him of sexual misconduct, sapping his momentum and driving many of his allies away.To Mr. Stringer, Ms. Kim was a peer with whom he had an “on-and-off” consensual relationship that spanned four to five months. At the time, he was 41. Ms. Kim was 30. They were both unmarried.To Ms. Kim, who says she was intensely involved with Mr. Stringer’s campaign while trying to forge her own path in politics, he was a mentor who made unwanted advances.Supporters of Ms. Kim at an April news conference where she went public with her allegations against Mr. Stringer. Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesIn an interview at her Manhattan apartment last week, Ms. Kim described three instances during the campaign of unwanted touching in taxis, and she said Mr. Stringer had kissed her and groped her at a bar without her consent, an account she also shared with Gothamist.“He constantly reminded me of his power by saying things like, ‘You want me to make a phone call for you to change your life,’ ‘You want me to make you the first Asian district leader,’” Ms. Kim said. “There was no doubt in my mind that he was powerful and he could make or break me.”Mr. Stringer has denied making unwanted sexual advances and he said he never suggested he could give her that political position. He also objected to the idea that he had significant power over Ms. Kim.“Virtually every one of my friends volunteered on the campaign,” Mr. Stringer, who declined an interview request, said in a statement. “There was no sense in which they were subordinates. While I obviously can’t speak to how any individual felt, I don’t think most people who were part of our social circle would say there was a power dynamic at play.”Presented with Ms. Kim’s description of unwanted advances, Mr. Stringer said, “The way Jean describes our interactions, and what she leaves out, amounts to a fundamental distortion of what happened.”He offered a detailed account of what he has said was a consensual relationship.“I would estimate that on at least a dozen occasions over four to five months, an evening out ended with us kissing,” he said. “Sometimes the kissing was initiated by Jean and sometimes it was initiated by me.”Ms. Kim later said through her lawyer that Mr. Stringer’s account was “absolutely false,” and that she “certainly never initiated a kiss or any physical contact of any kind” with Mr. Stringer.Her lawyer, Patricia Pastor, said she filed a complaint with the New York attorney general’s office, alleging sexual abuse and sexual harassment.“I was never attracted to Stringer in the least,” Ms. Kim said. “He was an older man that I looked up to as a trusted mentor.”For nearly two decades, Ms. Kim largely kept her account of their interactions to herself. But as Mr. Stringer entered the final stretch of the race, appearing on her television often, and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo faced his own allegations of sexual misconduct, she decided to go public with her story, she said.When Mr. Stringer called for Mr. Cuomo to resign, Ms. Kim said she saw it as hypocritical. And when Mr. Stringer’s allies criticized Andrew Yang, a rival mayoral candidate, for “laughing at a misogynistic joke,” she said, “I felt triggered and thought about the abuse I endured.”Ms. Kim said she had not decided whom she was supporting for mayor.Mr. Stringer, Ms. Kim and around a half-dozen people involved in the 2001 race agree that the two shared overlapping social circles and that she actively supported his campaign.Beyond that, it may never be possible to know the full picture of the events of that year. Ms. Kim has not identified anyone from that time who could corroborate her version of events, and she indicated that she had no records from then regarding her allegations.In an interview on Saturday, Ms. Kim’s sister, Susan, said she recalled that at some point in 2001, Jean Kim became “withdrawn and stressed” after having previously been “very enthusiastic” about Mr. Stringer’s campaign. The next year, Susan Kim said, her sister indicated more clearly that she wanted to put distance between herself and Mr. Stringer and their shared political club, though she acknowledged that her sister “occasionally went to certain events after that.”“She did not share any specific details until fairly recently,” Susan Kim, 45, a lawyer in Manhattan, said. “We’re from an Asian family. It’s kind of like a taboo topic for us. So we didn’t really feel comfortable talking about those things.”Ms. Kim said she had not told anyone in detail about her account until she disclosed it to her fiancé, Anthony Caifano, after a brusque encounter with Mr. Stringer following his successful 2013 run for city comptroller. (Mr. Caifano, who attended the interview, confirmed the account. Ms. Pastor also attended.)Experts say there are many reasons that victims of unwanted sexual advances may not share their stories until years later, if ever. Mr. Stringer with his wife, Elyse Buxbaum, last month. He has categorically denied Ms. Kim’s allegations of sexual abuse, saying the two had an “on-and-off” consensual relationship.Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesMr. Stringer’s campaign noted that several apparent discrepancies in Ms. Kim’s account have emerged since she and Ms. Pastor presented the allegations at an April 28 news conference. Such inconsistencies do not prove or disprove whether there was a consensual relationship, but Mr. Stringer’s allies argue that they raise broader doubts about Ms. Kim’s credibility.Ms. Kim and Ms. Pastor have described Ms. Kim as an “unpaid intern,” a term that can conjure an image of a student, or someone just out of college, Mr. Stringer’s allies note. But Mr. Stringer’s team and others who were directly involved in the race dispute that characterization, saying Ms. Kim was a volunteer.In her initial statement, Ms. Kim said Mr. Stringer’s advances had made her so uncomfortable that she decided to move, and to leave the Community Free Democrats, the Upper West Side political club in which they were both active.But she appeared to be listed as a vice president of the club in 2002, which Ms. Pastor did not directly dispute, and she listed herself as a club member on her résumé as late as 2013, as The Intercept has reported.Records show that she also continued to make relatively modest political contributions to Mr. Stringer long after the incidents allegedly occurred. Mr. Stringer’s campaign produced an email showing her asking if she could “be helpful” on his 2013 comptroller campaign as she passed along her résumé.Publicly and privately, supporters of Mr. Stringer who were involved in city politics at that time have questioned Ms. Kim’s description of his influence over his social circle. “The thing about these groups, there was no hierarchy, there was no power dynamic,” said Mike McGuire, a labor official who is part of a coalition that has endorsed Mr. Stringer. “We were all colleagues, friends, tied into the same business. We all hung around together.”.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-1dg6kl4{margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:15px;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}.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;}Ms. Kim said she had maintained ties to Mr. Stringer’s orbit because she wanted to build her career, and could not afford to alienate him. After years working in lobbying, Ms. Kim said she is shifting out of the profession and weighing other interests, including activism and stand-up comedy.“This is not a pleasant experience for me,” Ms. Kim said of her decision to make the allegations public now. “I hope to God I don’t have to move out of New York City because of it.”Ms. Kim moved to New York in 1998, she said. She later found a full-time job in public relations and threw herself into the Community Free Democrats.Ms. Pastor said on April 28 that Ms. Kim had been introduced to Mr. Stringer by Eric T. Schneiderman, another club member, whom she met in 2001. He later became New York’s attorney general and resigned after being accused of assault by several women.Ms. Kim later suggested the association was less direct: She said that she had “chatted” with Mr. Schneiderman about her interest in politics in 1998. He directed her to the Community Free Democrats and suggested she seek out Mr. Stringer, she said.Ms. Kim grew animated during the interview while describing a conversation with Mr. Stringer in early 2001 in which, she said, he sketched out an expansive role for her. In addition to her full-time job, she said, she spent about 35 hours a week helping out on the campaign, including traveling to events with Mr. Stringer.“I was just really like, ‘Oh my God, I just hit the jackpot,’” she said. “For somebody who doesn’t know anybody, and now here he is taking me under his wing.”Mr. Stringer said in his statement that there had been no such offer.“Even I wasn’t out campaigning for 35 hours a week — most days, I was holed up in a room for hours on end raising money,” said Mr. Stringer, who, as a state lawmaker, was also traveling between New York City and Albany in 2001.In a cab that summer, Ms. Kim said, Mr. Stringer grazed her knee, suggesting he did so with his hand. Given the adrenaline of the campaign, she brushed off the episode. It happened again a few weeks later as they shared another cab. This time, his hand on her leg was “a little bit more insistent,” and she shifted away, she said.New York’s primaries in 2001 were set for Sept. 11. About a week before, Ms. Kim said, she was at a bar — she believes it was Merchants — with Mr. Stringer and others from their political circle. She and Mr. Stringer were the last to leave. They were at the bar facing each other, she said, when Mr. Stringer kissed her. Ms. Kim tensed up. Then, she said, he kissed her again, this time more passionately.“The fact that I didn’t slap him away, I think he just took that as indication that it was OK,” she said. Then, she said, he “took his hand, and he put it down, like, the back of my pants.”Ms. Kim described being both “horrified” and fearful of alienating Mr. Stringer. She said she sought to turn the conversation back to business. Mr. Stringer warned her not to tell anyone of his advances, she said. Mr. Stringer said Ms. Kim’s account of that remark was “totally and completely false. Our relationship was never a secret, and I would not have said anything of the sort.” Ms. Kim, center, and other supporters trailing Mr. Stringer on the Upper West Side in September 2001 during his campaign for public advocate. Michelle V. Agins/The New York TimesAfter the World Trade Center attacks, the primary was rescheduled for Sept. 25. Ms. Kim said she shared one more cab ride with Mr. Stringer when he made more advances, asking why she would not have sex with him.At a political meeting around that time, she said, he suggested he could make her the area’s first Asian-American district leader — if she proved her loyalty to him. Mr. Stringer denied suggesting that, but offered other details of what he has said was a consensual relationship.“She called me because she wasn’t feeling well, and I went over to her apartment to check on her,” Mr. Stringer said. “After the primary, I remember we had many long, heartfelt conversations, both on the phone and in person, about the disappointment of the election. On a few of those occasions, we kissed.”Ms. Kim said Mr. Stringer may have visited once when she was ill, but she insisted she had never initiated romantic interactions with him.As the interview at Ms. Kim’s apartment concluded, Ms. Pastor, her lawyer, raised an issue that is at the heart of the controversy — a question that has left New York Democrats deeply divided.“Is consent even possible in that situation?” she said.Kitty Bennett contributed research. More