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      Glenn Youngkin Declares Victory as G.O.P. Nominee for Virginia Governor

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      Mr. Youngkin, a wealthy newcomer to politics who walked a line between the Trump base of the G.O.P. and business interests, will look to test Democrats’ strength in the blue-leaning state in November.Glenn Youngkin, a wealthy first-time candidate who walked a line between his party’s Trump-centric base and appeals to business interests, declared victory in the Republican nominating contest for governor of Virginia on Monday. He heads into a general election in one of only two states choosing their governors in 2021, in the latest running of an off-year race often viewed as a referendum on the party holding the White House.The Republican Party of Virginia had yet to announce a winner, but Mr. Youngkin’s last remaining rival, Pete Snyder, conceded the race. “I send my heartfelt congratulations,” Mr. Snyder wrote on Twitter. “He + the ticket have my 100% support.”The results were being tabulated by Republican officials two days after roughly 30,000 voters cast ranked-choice ballots at 39 locations around the state. Mr. Snyder conceded after more than 12 hours of vote counting, in which five candidates were knocked from contention, one by one, and their supporters’ next-choice votes were allocated to others still in the running. In the sixth round of counting, Mr. Youngkin passed the required 50 percent threshold.“Virginians have made it clear that they are ready for a political outsider with proven business experience to bring real change in Richmond,” he said on Twitter. The unusual nominating process came after an internal party squabble in which Republicans rejected holding a primary, which would have drawn a larger and more diverse group of voters. Former Republican officials from an era before the party fell hard from power in Virginia criticized the nominating process as likely to increase the G.O.P.’s marginalization.But neither of the two candidates who most closely aligned themselves with former President Donald J. Trump — who did not endorse anyone — prevailed, raising Republican hopes for the November election.Mr. Youngkin, who is likely to run as an outsider businessman, fueled by a large fortune from private equity, will face the winner of the Democratic primary next month. In that race, former Gov. Terry McAuliffe has held a significant lead in fund-raising as well as in recent polls over four rivals.Mr. Youngkin said at a recent G.O.P. candidates’ forum that “the last eight years have been crushing” for Virginians, and he warned that if Mr. McAuliffe were given another term, Democrats would end the state’s right-to-work law that prohibits compulsory union membership. If that happens, “we can kiss our business environment away,” he said.Mr. McAuliffe governed as a pro-business Democrat in his four years in office, and he began his campaign for a second term in December on a pro-education note, pledging to raise teacher pay and offer universal pre-K. (Virginia governors cannot serve two consecutive terms.) Mr. Youngkin said last month it was “a sad thing” that Medicaid was expanded in Virginia under the Affordable Care Act, one of the signature achievements of the current Democratic governor, Ralph Northam. He acknowledged the clock couldn’t be turned back.In a statement, Mr. McAuliffe compared Mr. Youngkin to other Republicans who “fawn all over Donald Trump” and “fully embrace his extreme, right-wing agenda,” adding, “Now, Glenn Youngkin has paid enough to purchase the Republican gubernatorial nomination so he can run Donald Trump’s dangerous playbook here in Virginia.”Republicans have not won a statewide election in Virginia since 2009, a reflection of the state’s changing demographics as well as the party’s tendency in recent years to nominate candidates who fanned divisive social issues, rather than appealed to suburban voters on kitchen-table priorities.The thumping that Mr. Northam administered to his Republican rival in 2017 was both a rejection of Mr. Trump and a catalyst in further pushing Virginia, a once-purple state, out of the Republican orbit. Mr. Trump lost Virginia by 10 percentage points in November.Still, Republicans believe they have a better chance of winning statewide this year than at any time in the last decade, after Democrats, who took full control in Richmond in 2020, passed sweeping liberal legislation on gun restrictions, raising the minimum wage and other issues.Mr. Youngkin, 54, was raised in Virginia Beach and has lived in Northern Virginia for 25 years. Besides defeating Mr. Snyder, a technology entrepreneur, he also outlasted State Senator Amanda Chase, who was censured in a bipartisan vote of the state’s General Assembly for calling the rioters at the Capitol on Jan. 6 “patriots.” Supporters of Ms. Chase accused Snyder partisans in the state party of rejecting a primary and engineering Saturday’s “disassembled convention” to hurt her chances. Ms. Chase had said that if he became the nominee, she would run as an independent. There is no indication she intends to do that with Mr. Youngkin heading the party’s ticket, which will also include nominees for lieutenant governor and attorney general.Many G.O.P. insiders heaved a sigh of relief that the nomination for governor was not won by Ms. Chase, believing that her general-election candidacy would have been likely to go down in flames given how deeply unpopular Mr. Trump is in Virginia.Mr. Youngkin’s appeal to Republicans was at least twofold: He is a political blank slate, with no record in elected office for Democrats to attack. And his private wealth — reportedly more than $200 million after he retired as co-chief executive of the Carlyle Group — will allow him to compete financially against Mr. McAuliffe, a prolific fund-raiser. Mr. McAuliffe raised $36 million for his 2013 election and over $9.9 million during the past two years, according to the Virginia Access Project. Mr. Youngkin has already spent $5.5 million of his own money since entering the race in late January.At the recent candidates’ forum, Mr. Youngkin aligned himself with Mr. Trump’s lies about a rigged 2020 election, declaring “voter integrity” a top issue and referring to Dominion voting machines — the subject of conspiracy theories on the far right — as “the most important issue” of the campaign.He pledged to restore a state voter identification law, to replace the entire state board of education and to institute the “1776 Project,” a curriculum of “patriotic education” proposed by a commission established under Mr. Trump that has been derided by mainstream historians.Although Mr. Youngkin is expected to pivot to reach independent voters, Democrats are sure to remind them in the fall of his most Trumpy declarations from the nominating race, and that he campaigned this month with one of his endorsers, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, a bête noire of the left. More

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      Andrew Yang's Endorsement from Rep. Grace Meng Shows Momentum With Key Voting Bloc

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      The former presidential candidate won a major endorsement in the New York City mayor’s race from Rep. Grace Meng, a top Asian-American leader in Queens.When Andrew Yang ran for president last year, the surprising staying power of his candidacy was powered by a fiercely loyal, politically diverse group of supporters often referred to as the “Yang Gang.”He also enthusiastically embraced his Taiwanese-American background, drawing support from Asian-American voters, even as he occasionally fed stereotypical tropes like describing himself as “an Asian man who likes math.”Now, Mr. Yang is running for mayor of New York City, and his appeal to that constituency may be critical in the June 22 Democratic primary. Asian-Americans have generally accounted for 6 to 10 percent of voters in previous elections, and a large turnout could have an outsize impact on a race where voter interest has been lagging.On Monday, Mr. Yang received a major boost with an endorsement from Representative Grace Meng, the highest-ranking Asian-American elected official in New York, as he seeks to solidify support among Asian-American leaders.Ms. Meng, the city’s first Asian-American member of Congress, said she decided to back Mr. Yang after she kept hearing from her constituents in Queens who were genuinely excited by him.“They really feel like he’s someone who gives them hope,” she said in an interview.Standing outside a school in Flushing, Queens, with Ms. Meng, who is also Taiwanese-American, Mr. Yang said that Asian-Americans were often considered an afterthought in the life of the city. He said that he was glad that people were inspired by his campaign, but he also wants to focus on the nuts and bolts of improving their lives.Representative Grace Meng, center, said she endorsed Andrew Yang in part because her constituents in Queens said that he was “someone who gives them hope.”Sara Naomi Lewkowicz for The New York TimesMr. Yang, a former nonprofit executive, already has endorsements from key leaders in the community, including Ron Kim, a prominent Korean-American assemblyman in Queens, and Margaret Chin, a city councilwoman from Hong Kong who represents Lower Manhattan.Asian-American voters represent an important constituency, with strongholds in Flushing and in Chinatowns in Manhattan and Sunset Park, Brooklyn. But they are hardly a monolithic group: There is great diversity among Chinese and Indian voters and along generational lines, with older voters skewing more conservative.Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, was endorsed by a group of Asian-American leaders last week in Sunset Park and also has support from Peter Koo, a city councilman from Queens who grew up in Hong Kong.More than 700 people from the Asian-American community signed a letter opposing Mr. Yang, saying that he was too pro-police and perpetuated racist stereotypes, and that “representation alone is simply not enough.”Many of those who signed are involved in progressive politics, including a candidate for City Council who wants to cut the police budget in half and another who is a Democratic-Socialist.John Liu, a state senator who was a leading candidate for mayor in 2013, is considering endorsing Mr. Yang, but had not ruled out backing Mr. Adams or Maya Wiley, a former counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio. Mr. Liu said that he likes many of Mr. Yang’s plans for the city and that Ms. Meng’s endorsement was significant.“Grace is a visible and influential leader, especially in this particular moment that we’re in with the Asian-American community feeling under siege and unprotected and underrepresented,” Mr. Liu said.Mr. Adams had been banking on support from the Asian-American community and continues to make the argument that voters can rely on him because he has been their friend for many years.“Before Yang, I was the Chinese candidate,” Mr. Adams recently told The New York Times.Mr. Yang has focused attention on violent attacks on Asian-Americans in New York and across the nation and has spoken about the discrimination he faced growing up. Bruce Gyory, a Democratic strategist who is not working for anyone in the race, said Mr. Yang could try to boost Asian-American turnout in the primary to more than 10 percent. He compared his situation to Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia, who was Italian-American and Jewish and who won in 1933 with those voters’ support at a time when Italians and Jews together represented a third of New York’s population.“His prospects depend upon that being the fact, just as it did for La Guardia among Italian voters in 1933,” he said.The League of Asian Americans of New York, an organization that has hosted forums in recent months with some mayoral candidates, has not yet made an endorsement. Many of the group’s members are Chinese-Americans who became politically engaged in recent years in order to oppose the elimination of admissions tests for New York’s specialized public high schools..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;}David Lee, a leading member of the organization, said that the two most important issues for the group were public safety and education.Mr. Lee, a retired financial analyst and registered Republican, said that he liked Mr. Yang’s personality and approachability, and believed it was important to have an Asian-American mayor. But Mr. Adams was much stronger in supporting specialized testing and law enforcement, Mr. Lee said, noting that Asian-American shop owners have raised concerns about enforcement for shoplifting and violent crimes.“He’s a former police officer. That really says it all,” Mr. Lee said.Mr. Adams has hammered Mr. Yang for his decision to leave New York City during the pandemic and for not being a native New Yorker — Mr. Yang grew up in Schenectady, N.Y., and Westchester County, and has lived in the city for more than two decades since attending Columbia Law School.His wife, Evelyn, grew up in Flushing and attended public school there. Her father owned a small business, and her mother worked as an insurance and real estate broker before becoming a stay-at-home mother. Her first job, the campaign noted, was at a bagel shop in Bayside, Queens.Andrew Yang did not grow up in New York City, but his wife, Evelyn, left, did.Sara Naomi Lewkowicz for The New York TimesMr. Yang said on Monday that he had a “special connection” to voters in Queens because of his wife’s roots, and it was like a “second home” to him.In downtown Flushing on Monday, reaction to Mr. Yang and the mayor’s race ranged from optimism to indifference, even as large posters of the candidate were visible, including outside the busy New World Mall food court.Takla Tashi Lama, 42, who works in the jewelry business and was waiting in line at the Queens Public Library to be vaccinated, said he planned to vote for Mr. Yang.“He’s very hard working and sincere,” he said, adding that he hoped Mr. Yang brought transparency to City Hall.Benjamin Chin, 30, who was working at a vaccine site at the Queens Public Library, identified himself as a proud member of the “Yang Gang.” He said that one important issue for him was keeping the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test to make sure that Asian-American students have a path to a good education. (Mr. Yang said he wants to keep the test, but to also consider other criteria as part of the admissions process to the elite high schools.)But most of all, Mr. Chin liked that Mr. Yang was an outsider.“I’m very much in favor of not having a politician in office,” he said. “I don’t trust politicians.”Nicole Hong contributed reporting. More

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      Kathryn Garcia for N.Y.C. Mayor: The Times Endorsement

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      article#story header { margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 25px; } section#opheader{ width: 100%; max-width: 100%; } /* body{ overflow:hidden; } */ /* body.show{ overflow: auto; } */ /* body .art-wrapper img, body .headline-wrapper{ opacity: 0; } */ /* body.show .art-wrapper img, body.show .headline-wrapper{ opacity: 1; transition: opacity 1s ease-in-out; } body.show .headline-wrapper{ transition-delay: 0.25s; } */ section#vi-preview-target-standalone […] More

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      Andrew Yang’s N.Y.C. Mayor Endorsement Interview

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      Andrew Yang is an entrepreneur and the founder of the nonprofit Venture for America. He was a 2020 Democratic candidate for president.This interview with Mr. Yang 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: Good morning. Thank you so much for joining us. We have a lot of questions for you, as I’m sure you can imagine, and not enough time. So I wanted to jump in but ask that we try for brevity whenever we can just because we don’t have enough time for all the questions we have. And we want to start by asking just why do you want this job? Why are you the best candidate in the field?I’m running for mayor because our city’s in crisis and I believe I can help. I’m a public school parent and someone who’s raising his family here. And if you think you can help our city during this time, I feel like you should do everything in your power to do so.Mara Gay: OK, that was definitely brief. Thank you. Andrew, you haven’t voted for New York City mayor in 20 years, including after the Sept. 11 attacks. You left the city during the pandemic. Tell us why voters should believe that you are connected and committed to New York City.I put myself in a category with a lot of New Yorkers who have voted in national and gubernatorial elections here in New York City but haven’t been as actively engaged in local politics. I think that number is something like 76 percent of registered Democrats or so are in that category. And like many New Yorkers, I see that our city is hurting right now and we need to do more. We need to step up in different ways during the pandemic. I mean, one of the first things we did with my new organization, Humanity Forward, was distribute a million dollars in cash relief to a thousand struggling families in the Bronx, which I hoped would be something of a template for a national approach.And at the time, I was a surrogate for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and was campaigning for them just about every day. And my focus at that point was getting Trump out of office. And I think we can all agree that him not being in office has been a tremendous thing for us all, certainly for New York City and the country.And then after Joe and Kamala won, I then, as you probably know, moved to Georgia for a number of weeks to do everything I could to help win the Senate. And I think that those victories are already having profoundly positive effects here in New York City and also around the country.Mara Gay: Thank you. If elected, you would be the first Asian-American mayor of the City of New York. Does that hold meaning for you, and what might it mean for New York?One of the proudest things about my time running for president was when Asian-American families would bring their kids to me on the trail and want a picture and say, look, you know, like, you can grow up and do anything. And that was so touching for me.I mean, I remember growing up the son of immigrants in the ’70s and ’80s and not seeing many people that looked like me when I turned on the TV. And so the fact that I may be the first Asian-American mayor in the city’s history has a lot of meaning for me. And, you know, when a New Yorker who, frankly, was not Asian actually said to me, like, hey, you know, I think having someone from your community be mayor would be really positive for the city, that also meant a great deal.Mara Gay: What would it mean for New York? The second part of my question, sorry.Not at all. So I was talking to my wife, Evelyn, about the fact that there is at least some chance that if I become mayor, there would be, like, a sign saying: Welcome to New York by Mayor Andrew Yang. And like, I thought, like, wow, that would be kind of positive, I thought, in terms of sending a message that New York City is the kind of place where people of different backgrounds can lead and contribute.Mara Gay: That’s great. Thank you. As mayor, you would be running a city with more than 300,000 employees, a budget larger than that of many small nations. You’ve run two nonprofits, several small businesses and two campaigns, of course. How would you describe your management style?I’m someone who wants to identify people who are passionate and dedicated and mission-driven, and then wants to give them room to run. The fact is, we have so many challenges we’re facing right now in New York. And you have 67 agencies and a mayor’s office of, as you said, you know, several hundred thousand workers. And so it can’t be the kind of organization where everything comes to you. Like, you need to empower leaders and managers and in different environments and different agencies so that they feel like, as long as their values are sound and their process is good, that they can make decisions on their own. And that’s something that I’ve tried to establish in every organization I’ve been a part of, for profit or nonprofit, that people feel like they’re able to make their own decisions, as long as it’s consistent with the vision and the values.Mara Gay: And that would include hiring a former sanitation worker or, excuse me, Commissioner Kathryn Garcia. Is that — do we have that right?Well, so to be very, very clear. It’s of course going to be up to Kathryn — if I do win this race — and she certainly would be one of the first people I call and say, “Hey, Kathryn, we need you.”[When we asked Ms. Garcia about this idea, she said: “If Andrew Yang thinks I need to run his government, then maybe I should just run the government and we should stop having me actually do the job and you get the title. I just reject that.”]But, you know, I think Katie asked me, like, if Kathryn wins and calls you, like, would you answer the call? And I said yes. I mean, like, this is a situation where you need all hands on deck. Certainly if you have someone like me as the mayor, one of the first things I should be doing is trying to find people like Kathryn who are very experienced in New York City government and the specific agencies, because you want to have that experience so that we can help move some of these bureaucracies, you know, towards action in different environments. But yeah, to be very clear. I mean, obviously, you know, like, it’s completely going to be up to Kathryn what kind of role she might have, if that’s the situation. But she’d certainly be someone I’d be thrilled to work with.Nick Fox: Your interview with The [New York] Post made it sound like more than just that you would hire good people for roles. It gave the impression that your vision was that of unusually detached from day-to-day operations, and the mayor of New York has been called the most, or the second most, difficult job in the world. And what you described sounded more like — cheerleader might be a little too glib, but ——So here’s my experience: The only way to make organizations work is to pay attention to what’s happening on the ground. And I think the leadership you don’t want, frankly, is someone who’s just in boardrooms making decisions, saying, “Do this, do that.” And then they’re having impacts, you know, blocks or miles away, and you’re not mindful of that.And so my approach is actually, Nick, kind of the opposite, where what I like to do is I like to go to the ground and then talk to the people who are doing the work. And say, OK, like, “What are you seeing? What are you doing? What can we help you with? What can we do better?” And you learn so much that way. I mean, that’s the way, in my mind, like, effective organizations run.So when I run an organization — so one of the lessons you do learn when you’re the C.E.O. of just about anything is that it’s easy for people just to tell you good things and not good things. Like, I remember the first time I called, like, an instructor when I was a C.E.O. — not the first thing, it was probably like, you know, I’d called people hundreds of times. More

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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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      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