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      Policing and the New York Mayoral Race

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      Listen and follow The Daily Apple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherWhen the New York City mayoral race began, two issues dominated: the pandemic and the police. The city saw enormous protests last summer that prompted calls to rethink or defund the police department. In the last few months, however, the progressive consensus has unraveled. While overall crime was down at the end of 2020, acts of violence were on the incline: Murders were up 45 percent in New York, and shootings had increased by 97 percent. A central question of the contest has become: Is New York safer with more or fewer police officers?Today, we see this tension play out in a single household: Yumi Mannarelli and her mother, Misako Shimada.Ms. Mannarelli took part in the Black Lives Matter protests last summer and is an ardent supporter of defunding the police. Ms. Shimada, who was born in Japan, is unconvinced. The rise in anti-Asian hate crimes has meant she feels safer with a police presence. On today’s episodeMisako Shimada and Yumi Mannarelli, a mother and daughter who live in New York City. Early voting Sunday morning at Saratoga Village in the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn. This is the first year that New York City voters have been able to vote early in a mayoral election.Sarah Blesener for The New York TimesBackground reading The New York City mayoral race has been fluid, but the centrality of crime and policing has remained constant. There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.Transcripts of each episode are available by the next workday. You can find them at the top of the page.The Daily is made by Lisa Tobin, Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Annie Brown, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Larissa Anderson, Wendy Dorr, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, M.J. Davis Lin, Austin Mitchell, Neena Pathak, Dan Powell, Dave Shaw, Sydney Harper, Daniel Guillemette, Robert Jimison, Mike Benoist, Liz O. Baylen, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Kaitlin Roberts, Rachelle Bonja, Diana Nguyen, Marion Lozano, Soraya Shockley, Corey Schreppel, Anita Badejo and Rob Szypko.Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Theo Balcomb, Cliff Levy, Lauren Jackson, Julia Simon, Mahima Chablani, Nora Keller, Sofia Milan, Desiree Ibekwe, Erica Futterman and Wendy Dorr. More

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      in Elections

      Whether Maya Wiley or Kathryn Garcia, a Woman Mayor Could Save N.Y.C.

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      Last week I wrote about why I thought Eric Adams is very marginally preferable to Andrew Yang in New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary. Yang is likable, and I can see why people have gravitated to his sunny vision of a vibrant, business-friendly city. But electing a totally inexperienced mayor buoyed by hedge fund billionaires and singularly focused on public order seems potentially calamitous. Not because public order isn’t important — everyone wants a safe city — but because it has to be balanced with a commitment to justice. More

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      N.Y.C. Is Emerging From a Crisis. Will Voters Show Up?

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      So far, turnout for local primary elections has been low. Historically, this has not been the case in challenging times.Theoretically, a city that is known for attracting some of the smartest and most ambitious people on earth ought to have a deep bench of gifted, charismatic politicians available to run for its highest offices. But the current election cycle has reminded us, again, that New York, for some time now, has not been that place. The lure of Wall Street and tech siphon off a lot of potential talent, and then those industries do not graciously reciprocate, giving back their most attuned or socially conscious.As compensation, we might get the deliciously viperous instead, just for the engaging fun of it, but there too the current roster is not delivering. When a high point of name calling in a televised debate is one candidate telling another that she sounds like a “press release” — a criticism that Ray McGuire leveled at Maya Wiley during the final Democratic mayoral debate on Wednesday night — it is hard not to feel nostalgic for the sizzle of the old days.Consider the mayoral race of 1977, in the midst of the city’s fiscal crisis, which resulted in the election of Ed Koch. Then, the Democratic primary field offered Mario Cuomo — whom Koch defeated in a runoff — Bella Abzug, Herman Badillo and Percy Sutton, among others. One of the most prominent Black political and business leaders of the 20th century, Sutton had served as an intelligence officer with the Tuskegee Airmen, a Freedom Rider, a lawyer to Malcolm X, a state assemblyman and a longtime Manhattan borough president before he made this bid. No one would ever have to question his commitment to living in New York — at the age of 12 he stowed away on a passenger train from Texas and slept under a sign on 155th Street.The 1977 race marked one of the four occasions during the past half-century that Democratic mayoral primaries in New York drew more than one million voters. No matter how much New Yorkers lay claim to liberal values, political obsession and locavore consumer habits, they do not turn out in enormous numbers for actual local elections. Early-voting and absentee ballot data for the primaries on Tuesday — which should effectively elect the next mayor, city comptroller, Manhattan district attorney and numerous members of the City Council — have not suggested a distinct surge of the kind this fraught and consequential moment would demand.The voting swell in 1977, as well as the other instances in which the tally exceeded one million votes, also coincided with challenging and pivotal moments in the city’s history — in 1973, a period of high and rising crime; in 1989, when the city was reeling from the fallout of Black Monday and the savings and loan crisis, which left a devastating impact on the real estate market; and then in 2001, during the aftermath of Sept. 11. Each one of those moments called, just as the pandemic recovery period does, for a transformational mayor. But for various reasons, the sense of urgency that animated those races is absent now.Jerry Skurnik, the longtime political consultant and data specialist, told me that by Tuesday, when the primary election concludes, he expected a turnout of roughly 800,000 (out of the city’s 3.7 million registered Democrats). He could be wrong, obviously, but the lack of attention and focus New Yorkers have brought to this race suggests that he most likely is not.In an ideal world, more would have been done to persuade people just how crucial their votes are right now, to summon the best and the brightest in advertising, to call on big New York celebrities to lead a get-out-the-vote movement, something like what we saw in Georgia in advance of the January Senate runoffs. “This all should have been integrated as part of the city’s reopening,” George Arzt, another longtime political adviser (currently working with Mr. McGuire) and former press secretary in the Koch administration, told me. He proposed sloganeering along the lines of: “‘A new election, new people for the future of the city. For you, for you children for, your grandchildren — this is the beginning.’”.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-uf1ume{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;}.css-wxi1cx{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-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-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 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:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}The mayor’s office did make an investment of $15 million in an education campaign largely targeted at the novelty of ranked-choice voting, another confusing procedural layer in a campaign season complicated by pandemic distraction and an unusual primary date, in June, rather than September. To that end, Mayor Bill de Blasio and the city’s chief democracy officer (yes, New York has a chief democracy officer), Laura Wood, introduced the “Rank Your Pizza’’ challenge, an interactive exercise meant to foster a comfort with listing things according to preference. What many of us learned from this is that the mayor who came in controversially eating pizza with a fork is leaving with a dubious affinity for green peppers over pepperoni (which took a dismal fifth place in his hierarchy).Early voting, which began on June 12, could also have been made easier. So far, the lines have been fairly short, which may reflect the fact that, post-vaccination, many people are perfectly fine with voting on a crowded Primary Day — or it may suggest glitches in the roll out or just the ongoing sense of apathy that has distinguished this race. Although the Board of Elections was pushed to open more early voting sites, Ms. Wood told me, they are not in every instance conveniently located. Some voters in Greenwich Village, for example, are assigned to a site in Hudson Yards.Every mayor is imperfect in his own way, and during periods of modern crisis, the city has not always elected the best person for the office. But it has managed to elect people who have left important and unforgettable imprints: Koch in the late ’70s, who helped to revive the Bronx from the ashes, building thousands of units of affordable housing; David Dinkins as the city’s first Black mayor and Michael Bloomberg in 2001, who redefined development, expanded parkland and grew the tourist industry to record-breaking numbers. What we get next is still anyone’s guess. More

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      These 8 Democrats Want to Be Mayor of New York City. We Have Questions.

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      “How’s it going?”
      “Thought we’d make an entrance.”
      “Hello, everyone.”
      “How you living?”
      “OK, let’s go through this way.”
      [music]
      “Am I just going
      to the chair?”
      “There’s lot of cameras.”
      “I could go into
      the movie business
      I feel pretty good.”
      “I’ve never walked
      out on an interview yet.”
      “All right.
      Tell me what you need.”
      “So starting with pandemic.”
      “What is the first
      thing you would
      do to help
      New York City recover?”
      “Systemic racism.”
      “Educational losses.”
      “Amazon headquarters.”
      “A car-free Manhattan.”
      “What is the key to improving
      public transportation?”
      “Police reform.”
      “Traffic congestion.”
      “Climate change, in general.”
      “That’s an interesting way to ask it.”
      “Do I get choices?
      Do I get to choose
      amongst my answers?”
      “I don’t talk as much as
      the other guys.”
      “That is a secret.”
      “I know, what does that say about me?”
      “Do you want me to
      expound on that?”
      “No questions about my cats?” More

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      Keisha Lance Bottoms Won’t Seek Second Term as Atlanta Mayor

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      Ms. Bottoms, who was mentioned briefly as a potential running mate with President Biden, is the latest mayor to move on after a year of pandemic challenges and social justice protests.ATLANTA — Keisha Lance Bottoms, the first-term Atlanta mayor who rose to national prominence this past year with her stern yet empathetic televised message to protesters but has struggled to rein in her city’s spike in violent crime, will not seek a second term in office, according to two people who were on a Zoom call with the mayor on Thursday night.The news shocked the political world in Atlanta, the most important city in the Southeast and one where the mayoral seat has been filled by African-American leaders since 1974, burnishing its reputation as a mecca for Black culture and political power.It is unclear why Ms. Bottoms, a Democrat, is not seeking another term, but 2020 took a toll on mayors nationwide. It was one of the most tumultuous years for American cities since the 1960s, with the social and economic disruptions of the coronavirus pandemic as well as racial justice protests that sometimes turned destructive.In November, St. Louis’s mayor at the time, Lyda Krewson, announced she would not pursue a second term. A month later, Mayor Jenny Durkan of Seattle announced she would not run for re-election. Several mayors in smaller cities have also declined to run again, exhausted or demoralized by the ravages of 2020.Two contenders who have been seeking to unseat Ms. Bottoms in the November election have promised to do a better job fighting what Ms. Bottoms has called a “Covid crime wave,” which includes a 58 percent spike in homicides in 2020.But Ms. Bottoms, 51, was expected to mount a formidable defense. She has a loyal ally in President Biden, whom she was early to endorse, and who repaid her loyalty with an appearance at a virtual fund-raiser in March. Ms. Bottoms was mentioned briefly as a potential vice-presidential running mate and said that she later turned down a cabinet-level position in the Biden administration.Ms. Bottoms, who served as a judge and a city councilwoman before being sworn in as mayor in 2018, is also blessed with a voice — measured, compassionate, slightly bruised and steeped in her experience as a Black daughter and Black mother — that seemed uniquely calibrated to address the challenges of the past year.It was in the aftermath of the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis that Ms. Bottoms went on live television and became a national star as she spoke directly to protesters. Some of their demonstrations had descended into lawlessness, with people smashing windows, spray-painting property and jumping on police cars.“When I saw the murder of George Floyd, I hurt like a mother would hurt,” she said. Then she scolded the protesters, insisting that they “go home” and study the precepts of nonviolence as practiced by the leaders of the civil rights movement. More