Six on History: NYC Mayoral Primaries and Election
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"When it comes to the next leader of NYC, there’s a diversity of mayoral candidates — particularly in the way they speak.
And since we’re talking about “Noo Yawk,” many have a local accent — some more than others.
Coming off Wednesday night’s fiery debate, language expert, author and Stony Brook professor Elyse Graham evaluated the candidates’ speaking styles and what they telegraphed to voters.
Their accents tended to fall into one of two categories — classic New York or standard American English — said Graham, who wrote “You Talkin’ To Me?: The Unruly History of New York English,” under the pen name E.J. White.
Admitting no opinion or position on this race, Graham analyzed the candidates’ accents based on authenticity — and their predilection for pronouncing the letter “R” after a vowel.
Eric Adams ...""After years in the wilderness of the de Blasio administration and waning influence in Albany, charter schools are gaining a foothold in the city again — if the race for mayor is any barometer.
The three leading candidates in the Democratic primary are decidedly supportive of charter schools — a dramatic shift from when Mayor Bill de Blasio was elected eight years ago and another sign of the citywide electorate hewing closer to the center in the June 22 Democratic primary.
Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, former city sanitation commissioner Kathryn Garcia and entrepreneur Andrew Yang — all of whom have hit first place in recent polls — have pledged to allow for the creation of more charters, publicly-managed but privately run schools that occupy space in public school buildings, if elected.
Of those three, Garcia has gone the farthest: The city’s former sanitation commissioner recently said she supports lifting the charter cap — a limit set by law on the number of new schools that can be created — during a forum hosted by Civic Builders, Democracy Prep and Achievement First.
Adams wants to keep the cap but called for closing failing charters and duplicating successful ones during a town hall hosted by the United Federation of Teachers, the city’s teachers union. He also said he supports smaller charter networks and unionizing charters.
Yang also wants to keep the cap, but is pushing to resurrect “zombie charters" — schools that won a charter but either closed or never opened. He and his former test prep company in 2008 put up at least $110,500 to help start a charter school in Manhattan.
De Blasio has continually butted heads with charter leaders, most notably Eva Moskowitz, the CEO of Success Academy and, for many years, the face of the city’s charter movement. In Albany, charters reaped the benefits of Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo as well as the GOP-controlled state Senate, but saw that support slowly dissipate, culminating in a Democratic takeover of the state Senate in 2019.
Richard Buery — president of the charter network Achievement First who also served as a deputy mayor for de Blasio — attributed the shift to charter leaders doing more work in their communities, more robust electoral and political work and polling showing most Democratic voters support families having the choice to send their children to charters.
The ongoing fight over the city’s notoriously segregated schools has helped. De Blasio’s attempts to diversify the city’s best-performing district schools came late in his tenure and — in the city’s elite public high schools at least — segregation has worsened on his watch. The city’s reluctance until recently to remove admissions screens for the high schools and high-performing middle schools may also be driving more support from Black and brown families for alternatives to the district schools.
Roughly 138,000 students currently attend 267 charter schools citywide, and Black and brown students that come from homes with low incomes make up the majority of those students.
"As I look at the vast majority of [the mayoral] field, what I see is a bunch of people who are not approaching this question from a deeply ideological standpoint,” Buery said, adding they’re "open to conversations or asking the question, ‘What [is] best for children?'"
Deep-pocketed charter school supporters have also taken notice.
Yang has the support of donor Jeff Yass, co-founder of investment firm Susquehanna International Group, who said Yang would be the best candidate for school choice. Jenny Sedlis, executive director of pro-charter group StudentsFirstNY, is leading a political action committee on Adams’ behalf.
Other charter supporters, including hedge-funders Kenneth Griffin and Daniel Loeb, contributed a combined $2 million to the Adams PAC. Griffin and Loeb also donated $500,000 each to the Comeback PAC run by public relations consultant Lis Smith to support Yang.
Sedlis, charter supporters say, has been a crucial player in the new energy around the schools. She took a leave of absence from StudentsFirstNY to run the pro-Adams effort, and even supporters of rival campaigns are singing her praises.
“Jenny's the consummate coalition builder, she knows how to mobilize just a whole range of stakeholders — parents, philanthropists, politicians in pursuit of a common cause,” said Rep. Ritchie Torres, a co-chair of Yang’s campaign and one of a few pro-charter Democrats. “Most people in politics over-promise and under-deliver. Jenny, in my experience, under-promises and often over-delivers."
He alluded to a discrepancy between rhetoric on Twitter and what rank-and-file Democratic voters are expressing, particularly in communities of color.
"There seems to be a set of people who are shocked that the leading candidates for mayor — Andrew Yang, Eric Adams and Kathryn Garcia — have pragmatic views on education and public safety,” Torres said. “I'm not shocked at all given the conversations I have on the ground in the community.”
Sedlis said she was around when de Blasio put a “big target” on charters in 2013 — when it was politically popular “to say ‘let’s annihilate them.’”
Times have changed, she said.
"My view is if you are a champion of charter schools and of kids and families, I want to support you, I want to pull resources together, voters for you and put an infrastructure around you to ensure that you can get elected, keep your seat," Sedlis said. "The charter sector is a community that supports our friends."
James Merriman, CEO of the New York City Charter School Center, also credited Sedlis and StudentsFirstNY with helping improve the political fortunes of charters and said mayoral candidates are, at the very least, willing to work with charters. Candidates Shaun Donovan and Ray McGuire — who also wants to raise the charter cap — have both spoken in support of charter schools, though their campaigns have yet to catch on with voters, according to the polls.
"We decided that the future was with the Democrat Party in New York… we also knew it was the more natural party for charters to be in,” Merriman said. “The teachers union’s politics made that almost impossible to actually do but… we've become part of the family of interests and activities and a sector that the Democratic party looks to."
Another major piece of the shift is the growing presence and recognition of leaders of color within the charter movement as well as charters pursuing less punitive and draconian practices.
The Black Latinx Asian Charter Collaborative, a partnership of public charters, was established in late 2018. The group recently hosted a forum on education equity issues with Adams and McGuire.
“[We] met with a bunch of elected officials [in Albany] who were quite frankly shocked that there were charter schools run by people of color and that was the thing that we heard repeatedly,” said Miriam Raccah, executive director of Bronx Charter School for the Arts, who is part of the collaborative. “When electeds specifically were reacting to charters, they were not aware that there were charters in their communities that were run by and founded by people of color, which was just shocking to all of us."
Even as charters see a new dawn of sorts this election season, there is still a movement of families and advocates who remain wary of charter growth and are taking steps of their own to fight it. City Comptroller Scott Stringer remains a strong candidate in the race and his skepticism over charters was among the factors that won him the endorsement of the United Federation of Teachers — the city’s powerful teachers union which is helping fund a multimillion dollar, independent expenditure in support of his campaign.
Last week, “Our City” — a left-leaning political action committee headed by Gabe Tobias — hosted a rally urging New Yorkers to not rank Adams or Yang, referencing the candidates' support from hedge fund billionaires linked to school privatization.
Maria Bautista, campaigns director for the Alliance for Quality Education — one of the groups that participated in the rally — told POLITICO the shift is about who’s funding the campaigns.
"I'm sure that's the story they're telling, that they're super invested in Black and brown communities, but the reality is that they have infinite amounts of money to pour into these elections,” Bautista said. “The candidates are looking for people to bankroll them and it's very clear that that's what's happening, I mean, follow the money."
She applauded Stringer, Maya Wiley and Dianne Morales, who are running more to the left in the mayor’s race, “for standing up to big money.”
When asked why the rally only targeted Yang and Adams given Garcia’s standing in the polls, Bautista said Garcia’s strong position came about only a few days before their rally.
“We're gonna be focused on all candidates that are supportive of charter schools and taking this sinister money and calling that out,” she added. (Garcia, so far, has not had a big super PAC supporting her campaign.)
Rafiq Kalam Id-Din II, founder of Ember Charter Schools in Brooklyn — an elementary school that focuses on African American culture and anti-racist practices — said he wants candidates to address the racial equity gap in the charter sector as far as school leaders of color not getting issued charters, noting only McGuire and Adams have addressed it.
He also said the receptiveness stems from recognition of the work schools did during the pandemic, noting how they did “innovative things” and worked hard to “be open and available as much as possible.”
“I think any mayor who's going to be taking over the city coming out of this pandemic is gonna want to make sure they have at their disposal every possible tool and resource, especially one that's as good and as powerful as charter schools,” Kalam Id-Din II said. “I think they're thinking strategically about that."
3) Mayoral Candidates Are Vying For The “Sleeping Giant” Latino Vote, Gothamist
"New York City candidates for mayor are competing aggressively for the often fractured Latino vote. With no one having fully secured this vote yet--expected to make up 20% of the electorate--mayoral hopefuls are increasing their efforts in these final weeks of the race, as the June 22nd primary quickly approaches.
Maya Wiley launched the “Vaya Con Maya” platform in Spanish last week, addressing public safety, quality housing, and stable healthcare, issues that Latino/Hispanic residents and lawmakers identified as top concerns.
Shaun Donovan released an ad that appeared on Spanish media. Unlike his rival mayoral candidates, Donovan speaks Spanish in the ad. And he demonstrated his Spanish-speaking skills on Saturday at la Iglesia Aliento de Vida, the largest Spanish-language church in the city." ...
"NEW YORK — It was their first chance to go at it in person, and the leading contenders in the New York City mayor’s race launched into full attack mode Wednesday night, questioning each other’s policies, ethics and competence.
The eight major Democratic candidates, facing off during the second of three televised debates, sparred over crime on the streets and in subways, the city budget and education. But it was a cutting exchange between Andrew Yang and Eric Adams that stood out.
With three weeks left until primary day, the race remains wide open, with many voters undecided and no clear frontrunner. The advent of ranked-choice voting has thrown the race into further confusion, as candidates compete for a much wider cross section of voters than in elections past.
Adams — the Brooklyn borough president and former NYPD captain — and Yang, a former presidential candidate, have traded first and second place in recent polls, along with former city commissioner Kathryn Garcia.
Adams went after Yang for never voting in a city election, leaving the city at the height of the pandemic and showing a lack of policy chops on key issues facing New York.
"You started discovering violence when you were running for mayor. You started discovering the homeless crisis when you were running for mayor,” Adams said at the height of the debate, co-hosted by WABC. “You can't run from the city, Andrew, if you want to run the city.”
Yang fired back: “The problems have been getting worse around you while you’ve been running for mayor and raising money from your friends in real estate,” he said, before tearing into Adams over a failed casino deal during his time as a state senator and his fundraising practices as Brooklyn borough president. The episodes have drawn scrutiny — but no charges — from city, state and federal investigators.
“We all know that you’ve been investigated for corruption everywhere you’ve gone,” Yang said. “You’ve achieved a rare trifecta of corruption investigations ... You don’t pay attention to the rules of the road. You’re unprincipled.”
Adams, who is Black, emphasized that he was never found to have committed wrongdoing and demanded Yang apologize for raising a false accusation against a person of color. Yang has also painted criticism of his own campaign as racially motivated.
The intense back and forth prompted Scott Stringer, the city comptroller, to chime in: “You’re both right. You both shouldn’t be mayor.”
Voters tuning in for the first time saw a glimpse of tensions that have been bubbling up on the campaign trail for weeks. Crime and economic recovery have topped the list of concerns for voters heading into the June 22 primary. And despite their attacks, Yang and Adams are largely aligned on policing strategy. If the election becomes about crime, Adams may have a built-in advantage as a former cop. If it’s economic recovery, Yang’s message of revitalizing the city’s tourism economy could carry the day.
But polls show voters also want a competent administrator after eight years of Mayor Bill de Blasio, a term-limited Democrat who has faced repeated accusations of mismanagement. With a recent boost from the New York Times editorial board, Garcia — the former sanitation commissioner and a go-to crisis manager for de Blasio — has recently jumped into the top tier, though she had few breakout moments Wednesday night.
Stringer has remained viable despite sexual misconduct allegations that he denies, and attorney Maya Wiley has tried to position herself as the leading progressive in the race after stumbles by other left-leaning candidates.
Yang raised alarms about the city budget, saying de Blasio has spent too much of New York’s federal stimulus money and set the city up for deep deficits down the road.
“Everyone on this stage should be livid about it, unless you don’t expect to be mayor,” he said. “We’re going to be left holding the bag.” (He was also the only candidate to say he’d accept de Blasio’s endorsement, as well as that of Gov. Andrew Cuomo.)
Stringer rejected the call for spending cuts.
“You don’t have any idea about the budget,” he told Yang and referred to a comment made by Yang’s top consultant, Bradley Tusk, who called his client an “empty vessel” in an interview.
“I don’t think you’re an empty vessel,” Stringer said. “I think you’re a Republican.”
The city comptroller also brought up the billionaire-funded PACs that have supported both Yang and Adams.
“They are people who want to privatize public education, and they’re among the largest Republican donors,” he said.
Adams responded that he is legally prohibited from coordinating with independent spenders, but he accused Stringer of violating his pledge not to take real estate money. “Give it back, Scott,” he said.
In another pointed exchange, Wiley targeted statements by Adams, a former NYPD cop, that he would carry a gun to church and as mayor. “Isn’t this the wrong message to send our kids?” she said. “Children who see their role models carrying guns may think it’s OK.”
Adams touted his work on anti-gun legislation and suggested voters check his record. “I’m just so happy that we have something called Google now,” he said.
Yang, meanwhile, was grilled on his plan for cash payments to low-income New Yorkers, which candidate Shaun Donovan called a “false promise.” And former non-profit executive Dianne Morales pressed Adams on his past comments raising concerns about a housing development for LGBTQ seniors.
Public safety topics again dominated the debate, as it did at the first face-off amid a spike in shootings.
Adams in particular has zeroed in on combating violence and pivoted back to crime when asked about his economic recovery plans.
“No one is coming to New York in our multi-billion dollar tourism industry if you have three-year-old children being shot in Times Square,” he said.
Stringer, who has proposed some cuts to the NYPD, presented a different vision.
“Everybody keeps running toward flooding the zone with cops, and that’s not going to solve the problem,” he said.
The third and final debate will be hosted by WNBC and POLITICO on June 16."
" ... Until September 2020, Tusk and Coffey had a preferred mayoral candidate: City Council Speaker Corey Johnson, who has close ties with Governor Cuomo and espouses a more centrist strain of Democratic politics. But then Johnson unexpectedly decided not to enter the race, citing the mental-health stresses of the pandemic. Tusk, who had been informally advising Johnson, found himself in the market for another candidate who might embrace a progressive yet business-friendly agenda. Yang wasn’t the only such person out there (former Citigroup executive Ray McGuire, for example, could have fit the bill), but he had something else going for him: celebrity.
Since the 1970s, a class of moneyed elites has posited that it is the “permanent government” in New York City. No matter who occupies the mayor’s office, its members say with pride, corporate and civic leaders will guide the city out of crisis and toward economic growth. They argue that mayors need tax revenue to pay for their higher-minded policy goals, like expanding universal pre-K, and that the better life is for business (retaining wealthy individuals who are willing to pay high taxes in the city), the more the mayor can do to support those on the bottom. De Blasio, with his tale of two cities, promised a deliberate departure from that arrangement, and even those sympathetic to his politics may acknowledge that his efficacy as mayor suffered as a result: For much of the past eight years, it has felt as if he were at war with everyone, with no powerful interests on his side. Tusk and his cohort were looking for something of a return to permanent government and for a candidate disinterested in ideological crusading. In many ways, what they have found in Yang isn’t dissimilar to President Biden’s appeal, with each promising optimism and consensus after years of rancor.
Backing an inexperienced candidate to push an agenda that would require bringing together a diverse electoral coalition and navigating the prickly outposts of political power may seem odd, but it has its advantages. Yang has no governmental record, so no past votes or policy fights can be used against him. He’s open to taking on unorthodox positions to satisfy the city’s various voting blocs, as when he took the stance that Brooklyn yeshivas, which a recent DOE report found had failed to provide any semblance of a secular education, don’t need additional government oversight. To me, Yang described his approach to politics as “apolitical,” and it’s true that in some ways he eludes our strict notions of progressive and conservative. “While he has some very progressive ideas, he’s a candidate who’s also willing to defy progressive orthodoxy,” said the journalist and former State Senate candidate Ross Barkan, pointing out Yang’s stance against defunding the police. When there was a spike in subway crime, Yang was quick to call for more cops. “That definitely makes him attractive to Bloomberg acolytes,” Barkan said. (There are staffers from the former mayor’s administration and campaigns at the top levels of the Adams, Stringer, and McGuire camps as well.)
“Andrew and I started spending time together and talking about what the job really means” in the early fall, Tusk told me. Yang wanted to ask about how New York City functions: “How do all the agencies work, what powers does the mayor have, what powers doesn’t the mayor have, what’s the interface with the City Council?” Tusk said. “Did he know as much as some of the other candidates? No, of course not.” Bloomberg hadn’t either, Tusk reasoned, and he did just fine in the office. When it was finally time last fall to call people and feel them out on a Yang mayoralty, “no one really knew him that well — everyone had heard of him,” Tusk said. “There was a lot of ‘I didn’t know he was a New Yorker.’ ” A few told Tusk they didn’t love the field and could be tempted to talk to Yang.
That was enough to make a go of it. On January 13, Yang declared his candidacy with a Darren Aronofsky–directed campaign video. “I came of age, fell in love, and became a father here,” Yang says over brooding background music. “Hang in there. Help is on the way.”
Yang’s rivals have been scathing about his candidacy, mercilessly trolling him for being a tourist in the town he’s running to govern. They dogged him for not voting in past mayoral races, for not knowing where the A train terminates, and for riding out the worst of the pandemic at his home in New Paltz. (He and his family rent an apartment in Hell’s Kitchen; his children attend schools in the city, one public, the other a private school for kids with special needs.) “I’d be the first to admit that I’m learning a ton about New York City,” Yang told me one day out on the trail. But while he has been easy to roast, Yang has been hard to catch in the polls.
His celebrity was on full display on April 1, opening day at Yankee Stadium. I found him by Gate 4 only because of the roving mass of cameras that followed him as he bumped elbows and cheered the city’s return to normalcy. Yang worked the snaking outdoor queue, taking pictures, at one point finding a guy who had gone to the same high school as he did. Even if they didn’t seem to know his name, people knew who he was.
Yang’s approachability is undeniable. “It is completely addictive,” progressive Queens assemblymember Ron Kim said. “Many in the media kind of reduce that as something immature. But it’s clear that when he’s walking around, people are drawn to that energy.”
Although he is a gifted glad-hander, Yang can be a stilted speaker, pausing for long stretches between big thoughts. At a joint event with Yang and Maya Wiley, it was notable how polished she was — how practiced at projecting, even above the din of the trains running over the Manhattan Bridge — and how tinny and strained he sounded. (The way Wiley stepped in at moments to answer a question directed at Yang made me wonder how the debates, not scheduled to start until May 13, may go for him.) She and others argue that he’s all celebrity, no substance. “T-shirts don’t win elections,” she has said, deriding him as someone who “doesn’t understand how government works.” Adams has blamed the media for Yang’s success: “We are creating a Donald Trump with Andrew Yang.” Stringer, who has spent his entire adult life building toward this run, can barely contain his contempt. He has called Yang pandering and mock-applauded him for passing the “smart test” on one policy idea. Yang spins all of this around, labeling his opponents defeatists. “They’ll immediately have five reasons why it’s either difficult or can’t be done,” he said of the responses of government types.
One progressive strategist, who said he thought Yang as mayor would be “pretty bad” because of his friendliness to big business, begrudgingly admired his approach. “Bradley Tusk outsmarted us. He saw something in the way that national politics was realigning that would allow for a candidacy of this sort to bust in with this name ID.”
A number of influential politicians on the left, like Kim, also see something in Yang. Kim was up front in saying he had endorsed Yang precisely because he thought he could bend him leftward. Initially, he had been turned off by Yang’s UBI plan, calling it a “campaign gimmick” during the presidential primary, and by an April 2020 op-ed Yang wrote saying Asian Americans needed to be more overtly patriotic to fight against “China virus” slurs during the pandemic. But Kim’s wife suggested he talk to Yang before putting him on blast. Kim and Yang met in January, and Kim introduced him to activists and massage-parlor workers in his district. After that meeting, Yang announced his change of heart on decriminalizing sex work. “There’s a whole list of other policies that they put out that I don’t actually agree with,” Kim said. “But because I have his ear and trust, if he does become elected, I can help move him toward confronting inequality.” The energy Yang generates can’t be replicated, Kim told me, so “how do we now use that for good?”
