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N.Y.C. Mayoral Candidates Debate Homelessness and Mental Illness
The city’s chronic homelessness has taken on greater urgency over the course of the campaign this spring, as New York has seen an apparent rash of random assaults, often carried out by people who appeared to be homeless, mentally ill, or both.The candidates clashed Wednesday night over whether this was more of a problem for those who are afflicted with mental illness and homelessness, or for everyone else.Andrew Yang said the solution was simple. “We need to get them off of our streets and our subways into a better environment,” he said of mentally ill people on the streets and subways. “There will be no recovery until we resolve this.” He promised to double the inventory of inpatient psychiatric beds in the city, a nod to the fact that many hospitals have gotten rid of psychiatric beds to build Covid-19 units.Scott Stringer, who had spoken of the need to build tens of thousands of units of “truly affordable housing,” went on the attack. “That is the greatest non-answer I’ve ever heard in all of our debates,” he barked at Mr. Yang. “Not one specific idea.” He defied Mr. Yang to tell him how much his plan would cost. The exchange came hours after Mayor Bill de Blasio announced plans to move 8,000 homeless people from the hotel rooms they were moved into during the pandemic back to barrackslike congregate shelters by the end of July, to make way for tourists. Many of the hotels are in Manhattan neighborhoods where long-term residents have complained that the hotel guests use drugs and create other nuisances.Other candidates shied away from Mr. Yang’s harsh rhetoric. Maya Wiley mentioned the struggles of a formerly homeless man who goes by the name Shams DaBaron and emerged as a spokesman for the residents of one of the hotels, The Lucerne. “When the response was to send more police into the subways where he was riding because the congregate shelters were so dangerous, he asked for help, and what he got was handcuffed and taken to jail,” Ms. Wiley said, adding that outreach to try to get people to accept placement in shelters needed to be done by “the right people,” rather than the police. More
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N.Y.C. Mayoral Candidates Name Rivals' Worst Ideas
The candidates were encouraged to sling a little mud when moderators asked them to name the worst idea they’d heard from one of their competitors.As might be expected in a race where concerns about crime have dominated, most of the answers and at least one heated exchange were about police and public safety.Both Kathryn Garcia, who has been hesitant to criticize other candidates on a debate stage, and Ray McGuire took issue with rivals who they claimed were oversimplifying the issue of policing.“These are complicated times,” said Ms. Garcia, the former sanitation commissioner, “and several of my opponents are using hashtags, #DefundthePolice. I just don’t think that’s the right approach. You need to sit down and really think through these things.”Mr. McGuire, a former Wall Street executive, said that he thought the movement to defund the police “will end up in disaster for New Yorkers.”Maya Wiley, a civil rights lawyer and a progressive, then said that she believed that suggestions by Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, to bring back stop-and-frisk policing and a plainclothes anti-crime unit were the worst ideas she had heard on the campaign trail.Then the sparring started, in a lengthy exchange over race and policing that involved the four Black candidates on the stage.First, Mr. Adams deflected Ms. Wiley’s criticism of his proposals by pointing out that her family had helped pay for her neighborhood’s private security patrol. Ms. Wiley tried to deflect the deflection, saying that New Yorkers understood that public safety meant more than increasing policing and required other investments.Then, Mr. McGuire jumped in to say that he thought both defunding the police and the return of stop and frisk were detrimental for “Black and brown” communities. He was quickly attacked by Dianne Morales, who is Afro-Latina, and who noted that many of the activists who started the defund the police movement were Black and Latino and said that Mr. McGuire could not purport to speak for them.“How dare you assume to speak for Black and brown communities as a monolith,” she said. “You cannot do that.”“Yes, I can. I just did,” Mr. McGuire shot back. “You know what else I’m going to do? I’m going to do it again.”After the heated crossfire, Shaun Donovan declined to answer the original question, speaking about one of his own campaign ideas instead of criticizing a rival’s proposal. Ms. Morales then said that she thought adding more police officers to the subway system, an idea supported by several candidates, was the worst suggestion she’d heard.At the start of the segment, Andrew Yang criticized Mr. Adams for once telling off-duty officers to bring their guns to churches to keep them safe. Mr. Adams shot back by criticizing Mr. Yang’s modified version of a universal basic income plan, which would give payments to the poorest New Yorkers. He called the idea “Monopoly money.”Scott Stringer also said the worst ideas he’d heard were Mr. Yang’s, highlighting his suggestions to put a casino on Governors Island, which is not legal, and to entice “TikTok hype houses” to come to the city. More
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N.Y.C. Schools: Mayoral Candidates Debate Desegregation and Improvement
The mayoral candidates were asked during the final Democratic debate whether they would prioritize integrating city public schools or improving them. But many experts would say that’s a false choice. In fact, research has shown that desegregation is a school improvement plan. Decades of attempts to improve city schools at scale without integration have had mixed results, at best.Most of the candidates took issue with the premise of the question, and said that integration and school improvement can and should complement each other. Even some of the candidates who have not promised major changes on integration, including Kathryn Garcia and Andrew Yang, said Wednesday that they would pursue some desegregation policies to boost city schools.Ms. Garcia spoke about her plan to boost arts and early literacy in public schools, and Mr. Yang returned to a favorite topic of his: the failures of remote learning during the pandemic.Eric Adams spoke about his own experience attending segregated schools as a child in New York City, and said students needed to be exposed to more diverse environments.Maya Wiley, who has spent the last few years pushing for school desegregation policies, has been at times muted on this highly contentious issue during the campaign. Still, she reiterated her plan to eliminate admissions rules she considers discriminatory, which sets her apart from many of her competitors. More
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Andrew Yang and Eric Adams Spar Over Police Union Endorsement
Andrew Yang and Eric Adams sparred over whether Mr. Adams, once a police captain, had sought the endorsement of his former union, a fiery back-and-forth that represented the complicated role of police unions in a Democratic race dominated by conversations about police reform and public safety.On Monday, Mr. Yang received the endorsement of the Captains Endowment Association, the union that once represented Mr. Adams. When asked at the debate to explain why he was the candidate best equipped to tackle a violent rise in crime, Mr. Yang pointed to the endorsement from Mr. Adams’s old co-workers.“The people you should ask about this are Eric’s former colleagues in the police captain’s union,” Mr. Yang said. “The people who worked with him for years, who know him best. They just endorsed me.”Mr. Adams tried to dismiss the endorsement, suggesting that he hadn’t asked for it and that was the only reason Mr. Yang had received it. But Mr. Yang accused him of lying, saying that NBC had reported otherwise.“I never went in front of them,” Mr. Adams said after a beat, looking more flustered than he has in past debates. “I said, months ago, I’m not taking any of the union’s endorsements.” But Mr. Yang suggested that the head of the captains’ union had said differently.Mr. Yang has said that he thinks it is important for New York City’s mayor to have a good relationship with police. On Tuesday, he expressed openness to receiving the endorsement of the Police Benevolent Association and Sergeants Benevolent Association, the city’s two largest police unions, both of which are run mostly by white conservatives.Mr. Adams has tried to distance himself from both unions recently. At the debate, he said the captains’ union had not endorsed him because of his record of police reform.The captains, he said, remembered him as someone who “fought against the abuse of stop and frisk, who fought against heavy-handed policing, who fought against treating our young people for marijuana arrests.” More
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The N.Y.C. Mayoral Race Is a One-Party Affair
New York City’s local elections are in full bloom, and all through town, Democrats are having a rollicking time.On Saturday night, Maya Wiley supporters were treated to a concert by the Strokes. Last week, outside the first in-person mayoral debate last week, rival campaigns gathered on West 57th Street. Instead of a brawl, though, a dance party broke out. Paperboy Prince, a rapper running for mayor, belted out a tune about affordable housing.“House, everybody needs a house!” he shouted as voters bopped to the beat and nodded in approval.In the crowd, Moises Perez of Washington Heights said Ms. Wiley was No. 1 on his ranked-choice ballot in the June 22 primary because she was “unapologetic about her progressivism.” Also, he said, “New York City needs a woman, a Black woman, for a change.”Nearby, supporters of Eric Adams and Maya Wiley put aside their differences over whether to defund the police and danced together in a circle, rocking out to the Pharrell Williams song “Happy.”After suffering through four years of Donald Trump — and eight years of Mayor Bill de Blasio — New York Democrats are in the mood to celebrate. The only problem? Democracy in New York City has become a one-party show.Before Mr. de Blasio was first elected in 2013, Republicans ran New York City for two decades. Now Democrats outnumber Republicans more than six to one. Primarily, that’s because the city has grown more liberal, while the Republican Party has grown reactionary and out of touch.The victor in the June 22 Democratic primary is so widely expected to win in November that the right-wing New York Post didn’t bother endorsing in the Republican mayoral primary.“It’s a joke,” Joe Lhota, the 2013 Republican nominee for mayor, said of the G.O.P. mayoral candidates. “These guys are buffoons.” Mr. Lhota is now a Democrat.The progressive Working Families Party has more sway in New York than the Republican Party and is a helpful antidote to the state’s often oppressive Democratic machine. Even so, many candidates backed by the Working Families Party also run on the Democratic line. This year, the party endorsed Ms. Wiley, as well as 30 Democrats running for City Council.Given the rancor of national politics, there’s been something reassuringly familiar about the tone of the campaign here, with candidates and canvassers politely trying to persuade voters in parks and at farmers markets.Near the Brooklyn Bridge on Saturday, a diverse group of Eric Adams supporters that included off-duty police officers and emergency medical workers were treated to a mariachi band. Jennifer Aguiluz said her E.M.T. union, Local 2507, backed Mr. Adams for mayor because he supports a plan to raise E.M.T.s’ pay, which has long lagged far behind firefighters’ in the same agency. “He understands blue-collar workers,” said Ms. Aguiluz, who is a member of the union’s executive board.After the country was nearly lost to Trumpism, the questions about whether Mr. Adams, the front-runner in the mayoral primary, really lives in New York City at all are sort of quaint. (Mr. Adams says he lives in the basement of a home he owns in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn.)Even Brad Lander’s dad jokes are soothing. “They call me Dad-Lander,” Mr. Lander, a city comptroller candidate, told a small crowd at Brooklyn’s Fort Greene Park on Saturday as people with Black Lives Matter signs looked on.Less soothing was Andrew Yang’s rally on Sunday in the West Village, where a large group of enthusiastic supporters packed into a small space, many of them maskless, prompting this reporter to head for the exit.Seriously, though, one-party elections hardly make New York the Shangri-La of democracy.For one thing, voter turnout in local elections in New York City remains abysmal. In 2017, the year Mr. de Blasio cruised to re-election, just over 21 percent of registered voters filled out a ballot.Democratic politics in the city is flooded with the same special interests and money that undermine trust in government everywhere. The most depressing example this year is the race for Manhattan district attorney. Alvin Bragg remains the best candidate. Unfortunately, his opponent, Tali Farhadian Weinstein — who is married to a hedge fund manager and has raised millions, including hundreds of thousands from financial firms in the city — just poured $8 million of her own money into her campaign.And it is still harder to cast a ballot in New York than it is in several Republican-controlled states. North Carolina, for example, has same-day voter registration, something New York State can finally adopt if voters approve a constitutional amendment this November. Let’s hope they do: New York elections need more competition, not less.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
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What’s at Stake for the Mayoral Candidates in the Final Debate
The two-hour debate on Wednesday will be one of the last opportunities for the candidates to redefine the New York City mayor’s race.As the candidates for mayor of New York City barrel into the final stretch of an unpredictable contest, time is running short for standout moments and efforts to redefine the race.Indeed, one of the last chances to reorder the contest arrives on Wednesday night, as eight candidates gather for the final debate ahead of the June 22 Democratic mayoral primary that is almost certain to determine the city’s next mayor.Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, is widely regarded as the front-runner and is expecting to be a focus of attacks again, allies say.He has strong support among Black voters and is connecting across the city with New Yorkers who are motivated by fears of crime, polls show. Kathryn Garcia, a former sanitation commissioner; Maya Wiley, a former counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio; and Andrew Yang, a former presidential candidate, are also considered among the top candidates, and one of them could still pull ahead in the final days of a turbulent and rancorous race.Mr. Adams has come under growing scrutiny over issues from his fund-raising practices to questions of residency. The debate is one of the last opportunities for his rivals to offer a counternarrative about his candidacy.The top four candidates are expected to share the debate stage with Raymond J. McGuire, a former Citi executive; Shaun Donovan, a former federal housing secretary; Scott M. Stringer, the city comptroller; and Dianne Morales, a former nonprofit executive.Each of the leading candidates has different mandates headed into the debate, which is co-sponsored by WNBC-TV.Maya Wiley has emerged as the favorite of left-wing Democrats.Jonah Markowitz for The New York TimesMs. Wiley’s allies say that she has a clear lane to herself: She has emerged as the favorite of left-wing Democrats with a message focused on combating social and racial inequities.Her challenge in the race is to build a coalition that is broad enough to win in a vast city that is not uniformly progressive, even in a Democratic primary. She is seeking to win over voters of color across the ideological spectrum as well as white progressives.Mr. Adams, Mr. Yang and Ms. Garcia, along with Mr. McGuire, have often taken a more expansive view of the role of police in promoting public safety than Ms. Wiley has, and issues around criminal justice and combating crime have been central flash points in previous debates.In a recent Spectrum News NY1/Ipsos poll, Mr. Adams had a lead on the question of which mayoral candidate is most trusted to handle issues of crime and public safety, and some of his opponents hope to undercut his standing on that subject.“We want to be contrasting with the other candidates, especially with Eric Adams, but also talking about a safe New York and a positive vision for New York,” said Chris Coffey, Mr. Yang’s co-campaign manager.Andrew Yang has slipped in public polling.Karsten Moran for The New York TimesMr. Yang also said Tuesday he intended to focus on public safety. He has slipped in public polling amid scrutiny of his knowledge of municipal government, as well as voters’ growing focus on the importance of combating crime. The debate is an important, if imperfect, chance to make another pitch.Mr. Yang this week also began airing negative advertisements on television against Mr. Adams, according to the ad tracking firm AdImpact — a move that could open the floodgates to a barrage of broader negative advertising.Ms. Garcia on Monday suggested she intended to stay above the fray onstage, but she has also signaled she is increasingly willing to draw contrasts with Mr. Adams on questions of experience and ethics.She is performing well in Manhattan, according to a new Marist poll and interviews with voters in neighborhoods like the vote-rich Upper West Side. But she must also diversify her coalition in the final stretch. And given her rise in the polls, she may find herself a target of criticism in the debate in a way that she has not previously experienced in the race, setting up an important test under public pressure.Reflecting Ms. Garcia’s standing, Mr. Adams held an event this week focused on her record, in a possible preview of clashes to come..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;}But even the strongest — or weakest — debate performance may ultimately have limited impact: Early voting is already underway, and a crowded stage will make it more challenging for any one candidate to dominate.Still, the candidates who are trailing in polls see chances to stand out.In a recent Marist College poll, Kathryn Garcia, right, was in second place behind Mr. Adams.Seth Wenig/Associated PressMr. Stringer once appeared poised to be the left-wing standard-bearer himself, but he has struggled amid two accusations this spring that he made unwanted sexual advances decades ago. He has denied wrongdoing. Mr. Stringer, a well-funded candidate and sharp debater, is “going to continue to make the case that he’s the best progressive candidate who can govern well and be ready on Day 1,” said Tyrone Stevens, a Stringer spokesman.Ms. Morales will be back in the spotlight after a campaign implosion where dozens of workers were fired amid a unionization attempt.And Mr. McGuire and Mr. Donovan, despite being aided by outside spending, have demonstrated little traction in polls. The debate is one last chance to stand out.The Marist poll found Mr. Adams at 24 percent among likely Democratic voters, when including voters who leaned toward him. Ms. Garcia followed at 17 percent; Ms. Wiley was at 15 percent and Mr. Yang, who had consistently led sparse polling for much of the race, landed 13 percent.Voters may rank up to five candidates in order of preference, and when several rounds of ranked-choice voting played out in the poll, Mr. Adams came out ahead of Ms. Garcia. But other surveys found different results, and polling is never predictive, much less in a relatively untested ranked-choice scenario.Gale Brewer, the Manhattan borough president, said voters are still navigating how to order their ballots. She described New Yorkers sitting in Central Park for long conversations with neighbors, trying to reach conclusions.“They know who their first is, and then they have no clue after that,” she said. “A debate can help with that.”In theory, ranked-choice voting was supposed to mitigate attacks, because candidates are hoping to have broad appeal and would not want to alienate voters by trashing their first-choice candidates.Yet the race has seen its share of negative campaigning. Lee M. Miringoff, the director of the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion, reached for an old saying — “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” — to explain how candidates make determinations about which candidates to attack and where to make overtures.“They have to sort of demonstrate, ‘If you’re with me, stay with me,’” he said. “‘If you’re not with me, here’s why you should join my campaign. If you’re not going to do that, at least put me into the running so I can get into a later round.’”Emma G. Fitzsimmons and Michael Gold contributed reporting. More
