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Thursday, March 28, 2024

With Indifference From New Yorkers, The Mayoral Race is Hard to Predict

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By: Jared Evan

With only eight weeks to the NY Mayoral primary, there does not seem to be the excitement you usually see when the big apple picks their mayor. The NY times reported that New Yorkers “remain utterly disengaged and oblivious to the race and the platforms of the leading candidates.

While former presidential candidate Andrew Yang still has double digit leads in most polls, the race is not over and the choices below Yang are starting to make their case as to why they should be mayor.

Eric Adams is starting to define his campaign very clearly. Adams served as an officer in the New York City Transit Police and then the New York City Police Department for over two decades, retiring at the rank of captain. He served in the New York State Senate from 2006 to 2013, representing the 20th Senate district in Brooklyn. In November 2013, Adams was elected Brooklyn Borough President, the first African American to hold the position. He was reelected in November 2017.

Andrew Yang

Adams, has made public safety a centerpiece of his mayoral campaign, is pledging to bring back a reformed version of Anti-Crime — a stance that no other top-tier Democratic candidate has taken with the June 22 primary approaching. While some of the far-left choices such as Diane Morales are speaking about “reimaging the police” and coming close to saying the popular woke catchphrase “defund the police”, Adams is standing for law and order.

“We should not throw out the baby with the bathwater. Having a good Anti-Crime team will continue to take guns off the streets,” Adams said in an interview with Gothamist/WNYC and THE CITY. “We can do it right, we’ll get it right, and we’ll make sure our city is safe.” Adams seeks a balance between crime fighting and safety and controlling abusive police and over targeting of younger inner-city residents.

The Gothamist reported that most Democrats running for mayor say they are against bringing back the plainclothes units, a view in line with the defund-the-police movement that emerged from last year’s protests.

Candidates Scott Stringer, Dianne Morales, Ray McGuire, Kathryn Garcia, and Shaun Donovan each told Gothamist/WNYC and THE CITY that they do not support bringing back the units, while Andrew Yang said he would consider the move, if elected. Maya Wiley, also in the running, did not respond to a request for comment.

Recently Yang made some interesting statements about policing in NYC. The former Democratic presidential candidate said that the city needs to be “mindful” of the need to “bring down the rates of violent crime that are rising.” He said this is “not mutually exclusive” from addressing concerns about systematic racism and the sometimes-violent actions of police.

Both candidates seem to be concerned with fighting crime while addressing police abuse issues, and we should expect their subtle differences to be more clearly defined as we head closer to the big primary day. The more leftist candidates are not focused at all on crime and dwell on more “progressive causes”.

But this race has been very unusual, there has been extraordinarily little excitement or buzz in the city, and this is an especially important election. Who is going to steer NYC out of the pandemic, the economic slump and increase in crime that has come with the pandemic? New Yorkers do not seem interested in the least.

“They barely know that there’s an election going on,” said Ken Sherrill, a professor emeritus of political science at Hunter College and former Democratic district leader. “Who the candidates are, when the primary is going to be — that there’s going to be a primary, and how to vote in it. Towering over everything is the pandemic.”

Scott Stringer is looking for a come from behind victory, much like Mayor de Blasio’s 2013 primary victory, and he is getting his endorsements from unions and worker advocacy groups.

“This is, without doubt, the most consequential election in many decades,” said Stuart Appelbaum, the president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, which has 45,000 local members and was the first major union to endorse Stringer.

“We need somebody who is prepared right now, armed with New York’s progressive values to work for us,” he added at a recent event for the veteran NYC politician.

The Gothamist reported: with roughly eight weeks until the mayoral primary, Stringer is hoping to build precisely that case to liberal voters in a crowded and still uncertain race where he is trailing the frontrunner Andrew Yang and Brooklyn borough president Eric Adams. In the latest NY1 poll, Yang led with 22% support of likely Democratic voters, followed by Adams with 13%.

Stringer, who has risen methodically in state and local politics over nearly four decades—from district leader to state assemblyman to Manhattan borough president and now city comptroller, thinks he is up for the challenge.

Stringer has a sizable war chest; both he and Adams have raised the most money in the race thus far, over $9 million and Stringer is polling at around 11%, the only candidate who has risen in the polls.

The race seems to be settling in between Yang, Adams, and Stringer. Yang has taken progressive stances on some issues, yet has stood up for charter schools, upsetting the teacher’s unions. Yang also has made some strange comments recently including comparing the NY Knicks to an ex-girlfriend. Could Yang’s odd sense of humor and off the cuffs remarks hurt him?

“I just see the Knicks like an ex-girlfriend that you root for, you know what I mean? Like, you wish her well,” the Democratic front-runner said in an interview with ESPN Radio”

With the lack of enthusiasm, the June primary could have an exceptionally low voter turnout and it is hard to say who would win the Democratic race, if that occurs. On the GOP side, Curtis Sliwa seems to be the heavy favorite against his one remaining opponent Fernando Mateo.

Sliwa, is all about crime fighting, law and order and oddly enough, animal rights. Could Curtis Sliwa pull off a major upset and become the next mayor?

Sliwa would seem to match up better against Andrew Yang, than Adams. In a battle for who is more “law and order”, Sliwa would come up short, based on Adam’s strong resume. Curtis Sliwa, against Andrew Yang, could come across as the life long, tough as nails New York City guy who battled crime with his street patrol “Guardian Angles”, while Yang is the Upstate guy.

We should hope to see more interest in New Yorkers, leading up to the primary, and hopefully some real excitement in November. The people of New York have a big decision to make, and this is perhaps the most important Mayoral contest the city has ever seen.

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