New York City mayor's race heats up with first candidate forum
Dawn breaks over Manhattan. | Spencer Platt/Getty Images
With national focus on the presidential election, the race to succeed Mayor Bill de Blasio kicked into high gear Tuesday night as seven candidates took questions on policing, real estate and economic recovery in the first public forum of the 2021 contest.
The candidates, who span the ideological spectrum, found some common ground: They each vowed to replace de Blasio’s police chief, Dermot Shea, who caught flak for his handling of nightly police reform protests earlier this year, following the Minneapolis killing of George Floyd.
They all promised to stay out of the City Council speaker’s race — a departure from de Blasio, who used his newfound influence in 2013 to position his favored legislator to win the powerful post, which is intended to serve as a check on mayors.
And to varying degrees, they all questioned his expansive real estate agenda and unsuccessful plan for an Amazon headquarters in Queens, which would have created at least 25,000 jobs over a decade but triggered opposition in part for its reliance on large tax breaks and its end-run around a public review process.
The three-hour forum, hosted by the Jim Owles Liberal Democratic Club, highlighted the policy disagreements between the moderate and progressive candidates and underscored the stylistic differences between career politicians and first-time candidates.
While every candidate — former city Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia; Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams; former Bloomberg and Obama administration cabinet member Shaun Donovan; City Comptroller Scott Stringer; former nonprofit CEO Dianne Morales; City Council Member Carlos Menchaca; former de Blasio attorney Maya Wiley — distanced themselves from Shea, they offered different approaches to managing the the nation’s largest police force.
Adams, a former cop, joined most of his competitors in favor of eliminating the NYPD’s Vice Squad, though he was the lone candidate to oppose any decriminlaization of sex work. And while he supported the right of New Yorkers to protest, he said out-of-state anarchists had come to commit violent acts within the five boroughs and blasted vandalism of police vehicles and private property.
Wiley, who chaired the city’s police accountability panel, has called for shifting certain responsibilities — like responding to calls of emotionally-disturbed individuals — away from cops. She also said the force’s budget should be reduced, though she has steered away from joining rallying cries to “defund” the NYPD.
Dianne Morales is supporting that campaign, and said Tuesday that police had profiled and assaulted her son. She also opposed the planned construction of four new jails to replace the notoriously violent jail on Rikers Island.
“As the first mayoral candidate to have called for defunding the NYPD, what goes hand-in-hand with that is the provision of critical services and programs to communities that need it most,” she said.
Stringer, a career politician who served in the state Assembly and was Manhattan borough president before becoming the city’s fiscal watchdog, was pressed about his record approving large Manhattan real estate projects like Hudson Yards and the expansion of the New York University campus.
“I tried to get the best deal for our community,” he said. “That’s what the borough president at the time was able to do. I think I did as well as could be expected.”
Stringer, who has $2.3 million in his campaign account as of the last public filing, long accepted donations from developers but said Tuesday he has stopped taking real estate contributions.
“I’ve put a marker down,” he said.
Stringer did not directly answer a question on whether he supports private development on public housing land, merely using the question to lament decades of mismanagement without offering a specific solution.
While most Democratic candidates seek to distance themselves from the real estate industry, Adams, who has nearly $2.2 million in his campaign account, took a different tack.
Asked by the moderator, Allen Roskoff, whether he would refuse campaign contributions from developers, Adams said he would not. “I own a small property so I am real estate also,” he said.
Donovan, who served as housing czar in the Bloomberg administration focused far more on his time in the Obama administration, but helped craft and implement the housing policies of former Mayor Michael Bloomberg. While he said he was proud of that work, he said additional measures are needed to combat the gentrification that has accelerated in the years since. He proposed expanding the right to legal counsel, a program funded by de Blasio that has been credited with slowing evictions, along with strengthening and enforcing rent laws, something that requires support from Albany. Donovan also said more rezonings are needed to address the housing crunch and create affordable apartments.
“We need the right kind of community-oriented planning,” he said.
The candidates were divided on the plan put forth by de Blasio and Gov. Andrew Cuomo to lure Amazon to build a headquarters in Queens with a multi-billion-dollar incentive package including non-discretionary tax breaks.
Garcia, Donovan and Adams each said they supported the goal — which was underway before it was scuttled by organized opposition — but questioned the strategy.
Stringer criticized it for circumventing a public land use process that would have forced it to come for a vote before the City Council.
And Wiley, who was a professor and MSNBC legal analyst by the time it was being debated, concluded: “It was clearly a bad deal because people killed it.”
Wiley was also pressed to defend her legal determination that the mayor’s emails with external advisers could be shielded from public disclosure. At the time, she reasoned the outside parties were “agents of the city,” tantamount to public employees, and should therefore be afforded the same protections.
The case was fought in court by two news outlets and the city ultimately lost, turning over tens of thousands of pages of emails between administration officials and the advisers.
Wiley on Tuesday blamed de Blasio for refusing to release the emails, despite providing the legal framework for him to keep them under wraps. “Those emails would’ve been public if I was the decision maker,” she said.
Like most candidates, she said she would not seek de Blasio’s endorsement but declined to say whether she would accept it. Adams was the only contender who indicated he might actively pursue the mayor’s backing.
In one line of light-hearted questioning, the candidates were asked if they smoke pot. Donovan jokingly asked if his sons were present, Wiley said she makes a “mean gin and tonic” and Garcia said she tries to avoid marijuana-induced snacking.
Morales, for one, said she doesn’t like smoking pot. “I prefer edibles,” she said.