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      New York Has a Housing Crisis. How Would the Mayoral Candidates Fix It?

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      New York City’s affordability problems were laid bare by the pandemic. Mayoral candidates offer solutions, but steep political and logistical obstacles remain.New York City’s leaders have been vexed for decades by a problem that has helped turn the city into a worldwide symbol of inequality: As years of prosperity gave rise to soaring luxury apartment towers, public housing crumbled and affordable neighborhoods vanished.The current mayor, Bill de Blasio, had made addressing the city’s housing crisis an imperative during his tenure. But now, the Democratic candidates vying to succeed him next year are confronting a crisis that may be even more severe as a result of the pandemic.All the leading candidates agree that housing is a top issue with huge implications for New York’s future, and each has offered a sweeping plan to tackle the problem. While their proposals overlap in many ways — every contender wants to spend more on public housing, for example — the candidates differ in the solutions and strategies they emphasize most.Kathryn Garcia, a former sanitation commissioner, and Raymond J. McGuire, a former Wall Street executive, have made the creation of tens of thousands of new homes for the poorest New Yorkers a top objective. Maya Wiley, a civil rights lawyer and former counsel to Mr. de Blasio, and Shaun Donovan, a former housing secretary under President Barack Obama and a onetime city housing commissioner, say they would steer hundreds of millions of dollars to struggling renters to help keep them in their homes.Scott M. Stringer, the city comptroller, is taking aim at private developers by calling for a hefty increase in the number of affordable units the city requires in big new residential buildings. Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, wants wealthy neighborhoods to make way for more affordable units. Andrew Yang, a former presidential candidate, and Dianne Morales, a former nonprofit executive, have keyed in on converting hotels to housing.Many of the plans face steep political and financial hurdles. But experts and housing advocates say that a failure by the next mayor to address the crisis in a meaningful way could jeopardize New York’s cultural fabric and stunt its economic comeback by making the city even more unaffordable for low-wage workers and residents of color.“If we want to see New York City actually recover, start with housing,” said Annetta Seecharran, the executive director of the Chhaya Community Development Corporation, a nonprofit group based in Jackson Heights, Queens, that advocates the creation of affordable housing. “If we don’t do housing, we’ll be spinning our wheels for decades.”By several measures, the situation is dire. Even before the pandemic, about half of the city’s households spent more than 30 percent of their income on rent, according to an analysis by New York University’s Furman Center. The New York City Housing Authority — the largest public housing entity in the United States, with more than 400,000 tenants — estimates that it needs $40 billion to fix leaky roofs, dilapidated heating systems and other problems.The pandemic has added a troubling layer of uncertainty. Federal aid is on the way, and a moratorium on evictions is in place. But renters’ arrears have risen to hundreds of millions of dollars. Despite the moratorium, landlords have been allowed to file new cases that could lead to the eviction of tens of thousands of residents — particularly in Black and Latino neighborhoods — once the moratorium ends. A spike in homelessness could follow.The winner of the Democratic primary is almost certain to become the city’s next mayor. And while the leading candidates have indicated with their plans that they would build on Mr. de Blasio’s strategies, they have also criticized the mayor, implicitly and explicitly, for not providing enough financial support to the poorest New Yorkers.In a report released this year, the Community Service Society, an anti-poverty group, said Mr. de Blasio’s administration had significantly expanded investment in affordable housing. But most of the efforts, the group found, were directed toward those who earned at least $53,700 for a family of three, equivalent to half of the area’s median income — when the need was greatest among those who earned less.Ms. Garcia said that she would borrow and use state incentives and federal money to help build or preserve 50,000 rent-stabilized housing units that would be affordable to people making less than half the area’s median income, as well as 10,000 housing units that incorporated social services for homeless people. She did not offer a price for her plan, but the money would be used to build new apartments, buy existing buildings, or offer subsidies and incentives to nonprofit or private developers.Mr. McGuire said he would borrow $2.5 billion a year over eight years, which would help finance the construction of more than 350,000 housing units. Most of that money would be earmarked for subsidies and incentives for developers to include rent-stabilized units in mixed-income developments that are affordable to those making less than half the median income. He said he would spend up to $500 million to create about 3,000 affordable units for older people with little income.“It is a departure from what we have built for the past few years,” he said.Mr. Yang and Mr. Donovan said they would spend billions of dollars a year to build or preserve 30,000 units meant for families in a range of incomes.Ms. Wiley is focused on distributing more than $1.5 billion in subsidies to New Yorkers who make less than half the median income to ensure they do not pay more than 30 percent of their income in rent. Initially, she said, federal coronavirus aid would cover the subsidies.She said the program would help keep people from becoming homeless, freeing up money that would have gone to shelters to finance the subsidies instead.Mr. Donovan has proposed something similar, a rental-assistance program that he said could be paid for partly with $330 million that would otherwise be spent on shelters.“Although building allows you to provide affordable housing, solving the affordability crisis has more to do with income and rent subsidy than development,” he said.For many candidates, investing in the housing authority, or NYCHA, is crucial to helping the poorest New Yorkers. Ms. Wiley and Mr. Donovan said they would borrow and spend $2 billion a year in city money to improve public housing; Mr. McGuire and Mr. Stringer said they would borrow and spend up to $1.5 billion..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;}Mr. Adams said he planned to raise $8 billion for NYCHA by selling the so-called air rights for some of its properties to private developers, something the authority has already begun to explore.Ms. Garcia said she would push state officials for approval of a complex authority plan that could raise $18 billion to $25 billion, in part by letting a new public benefit corporation manage some buildings. Mr. Yang said he also supported the creation of the new corporation, which could potentially tap into federal funding.Some residents and activists have argued against the plan, asserting that it could open public housing to the influence of private investors at the expense of tenants.Ms. Morales said she would reject the plan, which she characterized as the “privatization of NYCHA,” and would seek state and federal aid instead.Several Democratic candidates said the rules governing development in the city should be overhauled.Mr. Stringer has proposed that every new development with more than 10 units permanently set aside 25 percent of those units for low-income tenants. The proposal would expand the requirements placed on private developers substantially. But the real estate lobby would most likely fight it aggressively, arguing that without significant subsidies from the government, such buildings could reduce profits and thus any incentive to build.“The big real estate developers hate this plan,” Mr. Stringer said. “For me, that’s a badge of honor.”Ms. Garcia, Mr. Yang, Mr. McGuire and Mr. Donovan have said they would move to rezone wealthier neighborhoods and those with more public transit options to accommodate additional affordable housing units. Such a strategy could touch off the kind of fierce local opposition that has torpedoed similar initiatives in the past. Mr. Adams said he would push for wide swaths of Midtown Manhattan, from 42nd Street to 14th Street and from Ninth Avenue to Park Avenue, to be rezoned for more affordable housing.“It is the job of the next mayor to break through the bureaucracy and cynicism to deliver the affordable housing needed to sustain our city,” Mr. Adams said.A core piece of Mr. Yang’s plan involves converting closed hotels and office buildings left unused because of the pandemic into 25,000 units of affordable housing by 2025, with building owners getting grants whose size is tied to how affordable the rents are.“The system is broken, and we need a new way of delivering affordable housing to New Yorkers,” he said.Mr. Adams and Ms. Wiley have also proposed converting hotels and unused offices, and Ms. Morales said she would specifically seek to convert the hotels into housing for 100,000 homeless youth and their families. She did not say how she would pay for it. More

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      Lynne Patton Fined and Barred From Government Over RNC Video

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      Lynne Patton recruited and interviewed public housing tenants in New York City for a pro-Trump re-election video. The residents accused her of tricking them into participating.The video aired on the final night of the Republican National Convention in August, a two-minute clip featuring four New York City public housing tenants praising President Donald J. Trump’s record and bashing the city’s mayor.But within hours of the broadcast, three of the tenants said they were tricked into appearing in the video, did not support Mr. Trump and accused a top federal housing official, Lynne Patton, of orchestrating the production and misleading them about its intentions.While Ms. Patton had claimed the White House signed off on her involvement, a federal agency on Tuesday found that Ms. Patton had violated a federal law known as the Hatch Act that bars most federal employees from using their government position to engage in political activities.Ms. Patton admitted to the violation, the agency said, and agreed in a settlement to pay a $1,000 fine and not to serve in the federal government for at least four years. She left her job at the Department of Housing and Urban Development at the end of Mr. Trump’s term in January.“By using information and NYCHA connections available to her solely by virtue of her HUD position, Patton improperly harnessed the authority of her federal position to assist the Trump campaign,” the Office of Special Counsel, the agency that enforces the Hatch Act, said in a statement. NYCHA, or the New York City Housing Authority, oversees the public housing system.In her three years as the top regional administrator over federal housing in New York and New Jersey, Ms. Patton said she helped improve New York’s troubled public housing system. But Ms. Patton had also carved out a role as a Trump cheerleader who often mixed politics and governance.She was among a number of midlevel political appointees in the Trump administration who had little if any experience in their fields and who used their positions to promote the president and his views, often amplifying falsehoods and other misinformation. On Tuesday, Ms. Patton, who was a personal assistant to the Trump family before working for the federal government, said in an email that she did not regret having created the video.“Unfortunately, after consulting multiple Hatch Act lawyers post-employment, receiving incorrect and/or incomplete legal advice, even in good faith, from your own agency does not an affirmative defense make,” Ms. Patton wrote.In the email, Ms. Patton falsely claimed that the tenants had recanted their allegations against her and had acknowledged that they knew how the video would be used. She interviewed them over four hours in a New York City Housing Authority building last summer with a video crew.Claudia Perez, one of the four tenants who appeared in the video, on Tuesday reiterated her assertion that Ms. Patton had deceived the group into believing the interview would be used to highlight chronic problems at the housing authority. Ms. Perez, who said she voted for President Biden in the November election, said she would not have participated in a pro-Trump video.“She just wants attention, and I’m not going to give it to her,” Ms. Perez said in response to Ms. Patton’s remarks on Tuesday, adding that she deserved more severe punishment. “I don’t think it was stern enough.”After the video was broadcast, several federal watchdog groups, including the Campaign for Accountability, filed complaints with the Office of Special Counsel urging an investigation into Ms. Patton’s role in the production of the clip.In a statement, Michelle Kuppersmith, the executive director of the Campaign for Accountability, described Ms. Patton as a repeat offender of the Hatch Act. Ms. Kuppersmith said she was pleased that the special counsel had followed up on the complaint.“Laws like the Hatch Act exist for a reason and we hope this sends a message to other officials that violating the law has consequences,” she said.The video was not the first time that Ms. Patton was found to have run afoul of the Hatch Act. In 2019, the Office of Special Counsel determined that she violated the law when she displayed a Trump campaign hat in her New York office and for “liking” political tweets.While Ms. Patton worked for the federal government she also pursued a role in a proposed reality TV show featuring two other prominent Trump supporters, Candace Owens and Katrina Pierson. Ms. Patton claimed that a production company had wanted her to appear on a reality show for several years.To avoid a possible Hatch Act violation, she offered to temporarily resign or take an unpaid absence from HUD so she could film the series, according to records obtained by the American Oversight, a liberal watchdog group. The show, which she told HUD could include scenes from Trump campaign events, never materialized.At the time of the convention video, Ms. Patton was the HUD administrator for the New York region and had some oversight of the city’s public housing agency. She entered the orbit of the Trump family around 2009 after meeting Michael Cohen, the former lawyer for Mr. Trump, who connected her with Eric Trump, one of the former president’s sons. Ms. Patton first joined HUD as an assistant under Ben Carson, then the department secretary, and then relocated to its regional office in Lower Manhattan. Ms. Patton said she had produced tangible results, including spurring the city’s housing authority, long plagued by mismanagement and substandard conditions, to hire companies to help clean its 326 developments.In the final months of the 2020 presidential campaign, Ms. Patton echoed some of Mr. Trump’s most outlandish falsehoods about the election and his opponent, Mr. Biden.In a Facebook post last July, Ms. Patton suggested that she had no interest in helping tackle the homelessness crisis in New York because its leaders opposed Mr. Trump. “EVERY Democratic run city deserves EVERYTHING coming to it,” she wrote. More

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      N.Y.C. Mayor Candidates Court Unions and Latino Voters

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }N.Y.C. Mayoral RaceWho’s Running?5 TakeawaysCandidates’ N.Y.C. MomentsAn Overview of the RaceAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCourting Unions and Latino Voters: 5 Takeaways From the N.Y.C. Mayor’s RaceEric Adams won three big labor union endorsements, confirming his status as a top contender, and Loree Sutton dropped out of the race.Eric Adams is lining up coveted labor union endorsements.Credit…Michael M. Santiago/Getty ImagesEmma G. Fitzsimmons, Dana Rubinstein, Andy Newman and March 15, 2021Updated 10:56 a.m. ETLabor leaders are throwing their weight behind Eric Adams in the New York City mayoral race.Mr. Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, has won three major labor endorsements in the past two weeks, cementing his status as one of the top candidates in the crowded Democratic primary field.As Mr. Adams rose, Loree Sutton, one of the first women to join the race, dropped out, and the campaigns pushed to qualify for public matching funds. Andrew Yang, the former presidential candidate, announced over the weekend that he had raised an impressive fund-raising haul.Here is what you need to know:Adams wins key labor endorsements.Mr. Adams is making the case that he is the candidate for working-class New Yorkers.“We are building a blue-collar coalition that will deliver results for the New Yorkers who need them the most,” Mr. Adams said last week.He has received support from three unions: Local 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union, which represents about 85,000 building workers in New York; the Hotel Trades Council, which has nearly 40,000 members in the hotel and gaming industry; and the District Council 37 Executive Board, the city’s largest public employees union, representing 150,000 members and 50,000 retirees.The string of endorsements shows that some Democrats believe Mr. Adams has the best chance of beating Mr. Yang, who has been leading the field in recent polls.While Mr. Adams has secured some of the city’s most coveted labor endorsements, Maya Wiley, a former counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio, was recently endorsed by another major union, Local 1199 of the S.E.I.U. The powerful United Federation of Teachers has not yet picked a candidate.Scott Stringer, the New York City comptroller, had been a contender for the 32BJ endorsement, according to the union president, Kyle Bragg.“But this is more than just about friendships,” Mr. Bragg said, adding that the union had to consider who had “the strongest path to victory.”Sutton’s long-shot bid comes to an end.Loree Sutton, left, has left the mayoral race.Credit…Jose A. Alvarado Jr. for The New York TimesFor Loree Sutton, the retired Army brigadier general who withdrew from the mayor’s race on Wednesday, the turning point came in late February when a state judge rejected a lawsuit seeking to limit in-person petition-gathering during the coronavirus pandemic.Candidates must gather a certain number of signatures in person in order to get their names on the ballot.“I just would not go out and do in-person petition-gathering under these circumstances,” Ms. Sutton said. It was, she said, a matter of “public health principle.”Her mayoral bid was always a long shot. The former commissioner for the city’s Department of Veterans’ Services, she had little in the way of political experience or name recognition. She was running as a law-and-order moderate in a Democratic primary that tilts left.Some advisers had encouraged her to run as a Republican, but doing so would have felt inauthentic, she said. Centrism, she argues, remains an essential part of the Democratic Party.But early on there were signs that her brand of moderation would be unwelcome.She was excluded from an early Democratic forum because she had argued that protesters should be required to obtain city permits.She campaigned on the importance of public safety and rejected calls to defund the police, a posture that seemed out of step with many of her competitors.“Some of the worst atrocities in human history have taken place under the misconception that somehow we can create a utopian society,” she said.In the end, Ms. Sutton pulled out of the race, having raised only $200,000.She has yet to decide whom she will endorse, but she was complimentary of Kathryn Garcia, the former Sanitation Department commissioner, who is running as a pragmatist. And she has not ruled out running for office again someday.“It’s the journey of a lifetime,” she said.Candidates debate how to fix public housing.Kathryn Garcia argues that private management of some buildings in the city’s public housing system can be effective.Credit…Brendan Mcdermid/ReutersAt a mayoral forum on housing on Thursday, a tenant leader at a city public-housing complex, Damaris Reyes, challenged the candidates: “I want to know if you will commit to preservation of public housing, and how you will repair trust and empower resident decision making.”The 175,000 apartments in the city’s public housing system have been sliding into disrepair for decades, with the price tag for replacing leaky roofs, old heating systems, broken elevators and other problems now estimated at $30 billion to $40 billion.But the city’s proposal to fund the repairs by using a program that would hand over management of tens of thousands of apartments to private developers has been greeted with skepticism. Many New York City Housing Authority residents fear their apartments would be privatized, leading to rent increases and evictions.At the housing forum, hosted by the local news channel NY1, two candidates with experience running housing systems said the city’s plans provided a realistic platform.Ms. Garcia, who served as interim commissioner of NYCHA in 2019, said the blueprint would let the city leverage federal money that was already available. She said she could win over skeptics by taking them on tours of the Ocean Bay complex in Queens, where a private landlord has been making repairs. “You know who the best spokespeople are?” she asked. “The people who have actually had their apartments renovated.”Shaun Donovan, who ran the city’s department of housing preservation under Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and who served as President Barack Obama’s commissioner of housing and urban development, said that partnering with the federal government provided “the only pathway where we can truly get to scale.”Mr. Donovan’s plan also calls for the city to kick in $2 billion a year and includes job-training programs for NYCHA residents who would be hired to do much of the work, he said. Mr. Yang has promoted his own $48 billion — and entirely federally funded — “green new deal” for NYCHA. To combat NYCHA residents’ “massive trust deficit,” the city should “make NYCHA residents the majority of the board of NYCHA itself,” he has said.Public money comes rolling in.Andrew Yang has been a potent fund-raiser.Credit…Mark Lennihan/Associated PressSix candidates now say they have qualified for public matching funds, and a seventh may qualify soon.At the latest donation deadline last week, Mr. Yang proved that he is a strong fund-raiser. He reported that he had met the matching-funds threshold by raising more than $2.1 million from 15,600 individual donors in the 57 days that he has been in the race. Mr. Yang’s campaign said it expects to have raised $6.5 million once public dollars are received.“With 100 days left, we have built the foundation and energy to win,” Mr. Yang’s campaign managers said in a statement.To qualify for public matching funds, a candidate must raise $250,000 from at least 1,000 New York City residents. Those donations are matched at either an $8 to $1 rate or $6 to $1 rate, depending on which plan the campaign chose for a maximum of $1,400 to $2,000 per contributor.Mr. Donovan reported meeting the threshold, which would bring his total raised to $4 million. Ms. Garcia reported meeting the threshold by raising over $300,000 in matchable contributions. Dianne Morales, a former nonprofit executive, said Monday she had qualified for matching funds as well, raising about $320,000 in matchable contributions.The fund-raising leaders have also continued to rake in public dollars. Mr. Adams and Mr. Stringer, the only two candidates who have received matching funds so far, reported having raised a total of more than $9 million each once matching funds were factored in. Ms. Wiley, who announced that she had met the threshold last period before an audit from the Campaign Finance Board determined that she had not, declined to release fund-raising figures. Her campaign was waiting on a ruling Monday from the board.Raymond J. McGuire, a former banking executive who shook up the race when he raised $5 million in three months, is not participating in the public funds program. His campaign said he had raised another $2.6 million since the last filing period.According to campaign finance rules, if a nonparticipating candidate raises or spends more than half of the $7.3 million spending limit, the spending cap could be increased by 50 percent. Matthew Sollars, a spokesman for the board, said a determination on an increased spending cap would be made late next month.A candidate looks for the Latino vote.Scott Stringer, the city comptroller, has a Puerto Rican stepfather.Credit…Richard Drew/Associated PressLittle known fact about Scott Stringer, who is white and Jewish: His stepfather moved to New York from Puerto Rico as a toddler, his stepfamily is Latino and, partly on that basis, he hopes to win over Latino voters in the mayoral election.“Buenos días a todos,” Mr. Stringer said on Sunday in Upper Manhattan, as he formally kicked off his “Latino agenda,” not far from the Washington Heights neighborhood where he grew up. His stepfamily joined him and lauded his record, character and intelligence. “Scott is simpático,” said Carlos Cuevas, Mr. Stringer’s stepbrother, a lawyer.Mr. Stringer’s effort to highlight his family to identify with a particular constituency is not a novel one. Mr. de Blasio relied heavily on his African-American wife and biracial children in his 2013 run for mayor. At a forum about Jewish issues, Ms. Wiley, whose father was African-American and mother was white, made a point of noting that her partner is Jewish and the son of Holocaust survivors.The Latino vote — which is far from monolithic — is coveted, representing about 20 percent of the New York City electorate.The mayor’s race has several candidates of Latino descent: Ms. Morales and Carlos Menchaca, a councilman from Brooklyn, both of whom are Democrats, and Fernando Mateo, a Republican. None responded to requests for comment on Mr. Stringer’s Latino voter push.The same day Mr. Stringer was rolling out his agenda, his competitor Mr. Yang made his pitch to Spanish-language viewers of Telemundo.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More