N.Y.C. Mayor’s Race Tightens Ahead of Crucial In-Person Debate

Originally posted at: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/01/nyregion/mayor-race-debate-nyc.html

By Michael Gold and Katie Glueck

The leading Democratic candidates vying to become New York City’s next mayor veered sharply into attack mode on Tuesday, as they sought to draw distinctions on how they would address critical issues like crime and the city’s economic recovery.

The sparring may be a preview of what is expected to be a pivotal face-to-face debate on Wednesday, less than three weeks before the June 22 primary.

After months of campaigning in an environment marked by a pandemic-induced apathy, the available polls and fund-raising numbers suggest that increasingly, four candidates make up the top tier of contenders — though many voters remain undecided.

For most of the race, the two top competitors appeared to beAndrew Yang, the 2020 presidential candidate, and Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president. But two other candidates have seemed to rise recently: Kathryn Garcia, the former sanitation commissioner, and Maya Wiley, a former counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio, either of whom would be the city’s first female mayor.

A breakout moment at Wednesday’s debate could be an important launching pad for candidates who have struggled to achieve broader support, and the matchup appears increasingly likely to be more of a brawl than the first debate, a relatively staid affair punctuated by a few fireworks.

With early voting in the primary set to begin on June 12, the mayoral hopefuls on Tuesday seemed to be sharpening their lines of attack for the campaign’s second official debate, but the first to be in person.

At an appearance in the Bronx, Mr. Adams, who prides himself on his deep city experience, took direct aim at Mr. Yang, who, until recently, consistently topped limited public polling, though he has no experience in city government or elected office. 

“Why is he still in this race?” Mr. Adams said, adding that he thought Mr. Yang was “a joke, and it’s not funny anymore.”

Across town in Brooklyn, Mr. Yang, who spent months running on a message of renewal and hope and had positioned himself as an above-the-fray front-runner, laced into Mr. Adams in one of his most pointed critiques to date, seeking to cast the race as a choice between a change candidate and those who favor stale, backroom-dealing politics.

“Think about all of the favors that Eric had to trade to get to this point, climbing the ladder over this last number of years, scheming about his run, thinking, ‘Oh, this is going to be my big chance,’” Mr. Yang said, speaking at his campaign office in Bensonhurst. “Eric: Your moment has passed.”

The broadsides showcased the deepening rivalries and sharply divergent visions for how to lead the city forward, with the crowded field of candidates differing over ideology and the question of what qualifications matter to become mayor.

The last debate was defined by public safety more than any other issue, with candidates battling over whether to add more police to the subways, and Ms. Wiley and Mr. Adams tangling over his record on the policing tactic of stop-and-frisk. Amid a spike in shootings, a spate of anti-Asian and anti-Semitic attacks and clear differences between the candidates on issues of police funding and how to reduce violence, matters of crime and justice may take center stage again on Wednesday.

Mr. Yang, Mr. Adams, Ms. Garcia and Raymond J. McGuire, a former Citi executive, are considered to be relative moderates in the liberal field, especially on issues of public safety and dealings with the business community.

Ms. Wiley, Scott M. Stringer, the city comptroller, and Dianne Morales, a former nonprofit executive, have competed with each other to emerge as the left-wing standard-bearer in the race, supporting, by varying amounts, sweeping cuts to the Police Department’s budget and staking out a range of other left-wing positions. The former housing secretary Shaun Donovan has also taken several deeply progressive positions while maintaining close ties to the Democratic Party establishment, but has yet to emerge as a favorite of either the donor class or the activist left.

The battle for the left has grown increasingly muddled over the last month or so. Mr. Stringer had gained significant traction with key left-wing leaders and organizations, but an allegation of unwanted sexual advances tied to a 2001 campaign, which he has firmly denied, sapped that momentum, though he remains well-funded and maintains the backing of other vital supporters, including some in the labor movement. 

Ms. Morales’s campaign has been mired in controversy, with staffers accusing her deputies of union-busting and suggesting that her campaign had fallen short of the progressive values it has purported to uphold.

On Tuesday, Ms. Wiley made it clear that she hoped to stake out a position as the left’s best shot at the mayoralty and to court progressive voters left reeling by the upheaval in rival campaigns.

“I am the progressive candidate that can win this race,” she said at a campaign appearance in Manhattan.

As if to underscore the point, the Jim Owles Liberal Democratic Club, an influential progressive group formed by L.G.B.T. activists, said that it was endorsing Ms. Wiley, after rescinding its support for Ms. Morales.

Ms. Wiley’s campaign schedule and recent remarks, in many ways, reflected her efforts to build a coalition that includes voters of color across the ideological spectrum, as well as white progressives.

She started Tuesday campaigning with Representative Hakeem Jeffries, who is the state’s highest-ranking House Democrat and could become the first Black House speaker. Ms. Wiley then unveiled a new plan to address New York City’s housing affordability crisis, promising to expand rent subsidies to cover more city residents, convert empty hotels into public housing and extend a moratorium on evictions.

The housing crisis has become a major issue in the race: Close to half of the city’s renters are considered rent-burdened, meaning that more than 30 percent of their income goes toward rent.

Most Democratic candidates have vowed to build more affordable housing units, and all of them seem to agree that the de Blasio administration has not done enough to address the issue.

In her remarks, Ms. Wiley suggested that the mayor, her former boss, had not done enough to reduce the high cost of city living. Throughout her campaign, she has tried to tout her experience in City Hall while distancing herself from Mr. de Blasio.

But on Tuesday, Mr. Yang suggested in his speech that any time spent in Mr. de Blasio’s administration was a résumé item that should be disqualifying.

Mr. Yang’s address, which his team billed as his campaign’s “closing message,” was one of his most significant efforts yet to frame himself as a candidate who could reform what he cast as the city’s broken government.

Mr. Yang painted a dark picture of New York City, one in which streets would grow grimier, crime would continue to rise and residents would flee unless he were put in charge. The fault, he said, laid with Mr. de Blasio and the career politicians and government workers who enabled him.

“People are questioning whether this is where they want to raise their families,” Mr. Yang said.

The speech, which took significant aim at Mr. de Blasio’s administration, marked a striking departure in tone from how Mr. Yang has campaigned for much of the race. For months, he positioned himself as an exuberant political outsider who could restore optimism to a city crushed by the coronavirus pandemic and the economic crisis it wrought.

But with recent polls showing Mr. Adams and Ms. Garcia gaining ground, Mr. Yang both implicitly and explicitly laced into his leading rivals. Mr. Yang’s harshest words were for Mr. Adams, whom he cast as an ally of Mr. de Blasio’s who would ensure that politics was “business as usual.” 

Though he did not mention Ms. Garcia during his speech, Mr. Yang criticized the city agencies where she spent her career as ineffective. He repeatedly took fault with dirty streets and piles of trash, areas that Ms. Garcia oversaw as sanitation commissioner before stepping down last year.

When later questioned by a reporter, Mr. Yang said that he thought Ms. Garcia’s experience — which he had previously praised so extensively he vowed to hire her — was a mark against her.

“I think Kathryn has done a lot for the city,” he said. “But I think that many New Yorkers want to turn the page from the de Blasio administration.”

Eric Phillips, a former spokesman for Mr. de Blasio, said he expected to see more attacks on Ms. Garcia in Wednesday’s debate, a reflection of her improving standing in the race following editorial board endorsements from The New York Times and The New York Daily News.

Ms. Garcia’s fund-raising for the last reporting period was more than double what she had pulled in during the preceding period, though she lags other top contenders in the money race. 

“I’m certainly not suggesting she’s going to win, necessarily, but she seems to be the candidate who is actually moving in the polls — at some point, that matters,” he said. 

But even as the end of the election comes into focus, there is still time for the race to shift, again.

“It’s New York City and a lot can happen every day, and does happen every day,” Mr. Phillips said. “When you have a playing field this even, you have this much parity, the race can get jumbled pretty quickly.”