NYC Mayor/2021 Megathread

[Never Made it to Graceland]

Rose out-

https://twitter.com/MaxRose4NY/status/1345769407964966914

Maybe Rose runs for something like Brooklyn Borough President, or a State Senate or Assembly seat.

Not a chance he wins Boro president and state legislative office would be a downgrade, his ego is too gigantic for that.

[Never Made it to Graceland]

Rose out-

https://twitter.com/MaxRose4NY/status/1345769407964966914

Maybe Rose runs for something like Brooklyn Borough President, or a State Senate or Assembly seat.

Not a chance he wins Boro president and state legislative office would be a downgrade, his ego is too gigantic for that.

I like his outerborough moderate appeal; he should seek a rematch in 2022 or run for governor or something

I'm not sure. Who would support him instead of Cuomo? Their lanes would be mostly the same, in fact as much as I hate to say it Rose is (just) more progressive than the governor. If they were the only two candidates then the debate would just be a shouting match over who hates De Blasio more.

[Never Made it to Graceland]

Yang in.

https://twitter.com/andrewyang/status/1349522020615278593?s=21

Best of luck for Yang! I'm sure he'll be a great improvement over de Blasio.

You don't live here, so you wouldn't know, but De Blasio has actually been decent. New Yorkers love to bitch about the current Mayor, especially if the media tells them to hate him, and then they elect a train wreck like Giuliani.

[Never Made it to Graceland]

Yang in.

https://twitter.com/andrewyang/status/1349522020615278593?s=21

Best of luck for Yang! I'm sure he'll be a great improvement over de Blasio.

You don't live here, so you wouldn't know, but De Blasio has actually been decent. New Yorkers love to bitch about the current Mayor, especially if the media tells them to hate him, and then they elect a train wreck like Giuliani.

Eh, you really don't have to live in NYC (or be a media shill) to understand the objective truth of de Blasio's sh*ttiness:

What about on healthcare? The Long Island College Hospital was a huge issue during his first campaign; he even got arrested for protesting in front of a SUNY building about the sale of the hospital. There were multiple bids put in by developers, with 2 of them promising to keep a full-service hospital & renovating the satellite buildings as housing. de Blasio pushed for these proposals to move to the forefront to save jobs & keep health services for the community. Once he was sworn in, all of his public support went out the window, & the hospital heard f**k all from him. Backdoor dealings went through, & the hospital was sold to a real-estate developer who chose to tear everything down & barely maintain a glorified clinic.

That's not good from any perspective, let alone a left-wing one.

Yeah that's bad. I'd like to hear more and on more structural issues, but that's definitely a fair reason to vote HP.

Let's start with ineffectiveness. De Blasio regularly gets owned by Cuomo. Part of this is because that's how it's supposed to work, & also because de Blasio is just bad at PR. Universal Pre-K was a big deal & something that de Blasio was out in front of, but Cuomo batted him aside like a kid & passed the project, taking all the credit. Instead of just saying "we won, let's go," de Blasio whined about how it wasn't the best version, but people didn't care; they had Pre-K for their kids.

Vision 0 is his program to reduce pedestrian fatalities, & it hasn't exactly worked. In fact, pedestrian deaths in 2019 were up over 2018. The program has a few really unpopular features too: speed cameras, a 25 mph speed limit (especially unpopular in the more conservative fringes of the outer boroughs), & bike lanes in places were many locals don't want them.

His relationship with the NYPD also constantly causes him problems. At points, he wants to be able to distance himself from the actions of individual cops (i.e. Eric Garner's death) but wants to take credit for crime statistics. This pisses off both cops & people who have high opinions of the NYPD.

And his record on homelessness has been abysmal. The homeless are perceived to be everywhere & he has increased funding to seemingly no effect. His administration also allowed hotels to be converted into homeless shelters, & the city just pays $50 million/yr for homeless people to be warehoused in hotels without access to the basic services they actually need to stay off the streets. The sites of these hotel-shelters is also very controversial, & de Blasio has done next to nothing to meet with leaders in affected communities.

Another problem is one of corruption. de Blasio has been under investigation for his fundraising practices. He established a PAC/fund after his first election that his campaign fundraiser managed & solicited donations for. The people that gave to this fund were major lobbyists & their clients, particularly from the real-estate industry, & those donors have been rewarded. Rivington House was turned from a medical facility into luxury condos by a big donor & de Blasio's office gave the permission necessary for it to happen, & that's not even the first medical site to be converted (remember: the Long Island College Hospital) & even though he was arrested protesting planned conversions during the campaign, he just hasn't governed the same way. The Brooklyn-Queens connector is a tram that nobody asked for, wouldn't relieve much congestion, & would only benefit luxury condo developers along the Queens & Brooklyn waterfront. Those same developers that are backing the project are also hefty campaign donors to de Blasio. A corrupt restaurant owner who was a big political donor also got a controversial lease on a city-owned property in Queens after having given $54,000 to the mayor. He also allegedly helped his donors to sidestep election laws when giving to State Senate candidates he liked during the 2014 elections, which triggered an investigation.

And then there's the horse thing: horse stables (for the horses which are a part of the Central Park carriage rides) sit on very valuable land on the West Side, & developers wanna buy that land, but the stable owners won't sell. So developers funded NYCLASS, a group that went all out against Christine Quinn in the 2013 primary, & their consultants went on to get in trouble for breaking election laws because of data sharing & expenditures between campaigns. de Blasio said that he wants to ban the horses, but his motives have been questioned &, thus far, he hasn't been able to get it done. He has raised rates for horserides though.

So yeah. Seriously, it's some very structural issues that de Blasio has been bad at.

Fair points. I've never pretended De Blasio is perfect. But, I think the criticism has been way overblown and tends to be from the sort of people who really like empty luxury condos and that stupid Hudson Yards boondoggle. Also the homeless issue was just a bad situation with the hotels; I just can't see what he is supposed to have done there. Plus the rent issues that exacerbate homelessness predate him, they were caused by intense large landlord lobbying through the IDC at the state level.

[Never Made it to Graceland]

That's not a bodega, that's just a store.

It's missing the elderly uncle of the proprietor sitting in the corner on a milk crate watching the Real Madrid - Barca game on TV, the random collection of soap for sale in the other corner that looks like it hasn't been touched since the 90s, and in 2020, the half of the patrons wearing their masks incorrectly and the other half not wearing one at all, oh and the crackhead buying cigarettes and lighting up his first one right there at the counter.

[Never Made it to Graceland]

Andrew Yang was my third choice in 2020, after Bernie Sanders and Tom Steyer.

[Never Made it to Graceland]

Andrew Yang was my third choice in 2020, after Bernie Sanders and Tom Steyer.

You of all people supporting a billionaire? Color me surprised.

Steyer's on a different level than Bloomberg, who is scum.

[Never Made it to Graceland]

Andrew Yang was my third choice in 2020, after Bernie Sanders and Tom Steyer.

You of all people supporting a billionaire? Color me surprised.

Steyer's on a different level than Bloomberg, who is scum.

And Warren's place in all this?

I was one of her earliest supporters and donors, but I soured on her when she backed off universal healthcare (which Steyer and Yang didn't support but at least had some interesting ideas and ideological consistency) and pulled that whole "liar on national TV" stunt. She would still rank highly if I had to rank them all, but she lost some respect in my eyes. De Blasio and Inslee would round out my top 5.

[Never Made it to Graceland]

Whoever runs on finally kicking Airbnb out of New York has my support.

[Never Made it to Graceland]

I don't think Andrew Yang will realistically win, but I haven't really been following this race. Hopefully he does well.

https://twitter.com/AndrewYang/status/1350526053484277764

He's right. That's why he needs to go after Airbnb and developers and get those rents down. Especially in traditional ethnic areas like Astoria, Bay Ridge, Lower East Side, etc. But with the Bloomberg people working with him I have my doubts.

[Never Made it to Graceland]

Yeah, okay, this doesn't help, Shaun.

https://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/new-york-elections-government/ny-nyc-mayoral-race-shaun-donovan-biden-alums-20210126-geb5ajdsi5b47njrek6ew65oru-story.html#nt=barker

[Never Made it to Graceland]

https://www.politico.com/states/new-york/albany/story/2021/02/17/a-freer-de-blasio-convenes-labor-leaders-for-private-meeting-on-mayors-race-1364097

Very interesting article on Mayor de Blasio's preferences. TL:DR

Adams: Likes, particularly his "story"
Stringer: Has beef with him but would be okay if he won
Wiley: Likes but doesn't think she can win
Yang: Skeptical that he's ahead, not sure about him
Bloomberg-like candidates (McGuire/Yang?): Very opposed to, wants a pro labor not pro business mayor

I messaged his Instagram page asking him to primary Cuomo but they didn't open it

[Never Made it to Graceland]

I'm pulling for McGuire but either this thing is safely Yang's or RCV is gonna cause something wild to happen.

Curious what you like about him? A citibank exec who's friends with the Kochs is quite a bit different from the other endorsements you have listed.

[Never Made it to Graceland]

I'm pulling for McGuire but either this thing is safely Yang's or RCV is gonna cause something wild to happen.

Curious what you like about him? A citibank exec who's friends with the Kochs is quite a bit different from the other endorsements you have listed.

Formerly supported and volunteered for Yang's presidential campaign but I just have a bad gut feeling about how he'll transition to a Mayoral position, especially in a city like NYC with so many other people holding power and influence outside of you.

I love some of his ideas, The People's Bank especially, but I find McGuire to be the more pragmatic option. He'll be a corporate capitalist hack, but he'll be doing it in that later DeBlasio-esque way of it having at least a little bit of class consciousness.

It's more of a fear Yang be will ate alive by red tape and the dirty politics of the city.

Interesting. I also am skeptical about Yang's ability to navigate city government.

[Never Made it to Graceland]

"I said MATH, not read!" In all seriousness, though, this is pretty bad:

https://twitter.com/elizashapiro/status/1362489804257124362

All of the candidates are currently trying to schmooze to the Hasidic community right now since they vote as a bloc.

[Never Made it to Graceland]

"I said MATH, not read!" In all seriousness, though, this is pretty bad:

https://twitter.com/elizashapiro/status/1362489804257124362

All of the candidates are currently trying to schmooze to the Hasidic community right now since they vote as a bloc.

Ok, but still:

https://twitter.com/elizashapiro/status/1362491097625337859

That's illuminating, and troubling to hear. Hasidic kids need secular education - they are capable of doing great things if they get a solid framework early.

[Never Made it to Graceland]

https://twitter.com/katie_honan/status/1362826177627500546

What a f***ing wankstain.

[Never Made it to Graceland]

Not a great look

https://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/new-york-elections-government/ny-nyc-mayoral-race-andrew-yang-taxes-20210225-yaxw24lervcxxms2afh6qrhb7m-story.html

Kinda confusing though, because the article points out he supports numerous kinds of taxes that would in effect do the same thing, like the badly needed pied-terre tax and punishing the developers of vacant and/or wildly unaffordable luxury properties. Does Yang have the city cachet to get a lot of these ideas done? In my mind, if you're going for that angle, the only acceptable choice is Stringer.

[Never Made it to Graceland]

Insane thread here
https://twitter.com/danarubinstein/status/1364695297209810947
NYPD's budget is $11 bil, nearly 90% of which is salaries & pensions — cutting it by 30% without reducing police numbers is mathematically impossible (and, frankly, a 30% cut to cops is going to cause a crime spike that will drive more residents & businesses into the suburbs, exacerbating the budget problem).

But, naturally, that stood as the craziest thing said at this forum for only about fifteen minutes, because Eric Adams had this to say:
https://twitter.com/danarubinstein/status/1364698595237261317
400:1 student-teacher ratio, Khan Academy replacing regular school for everyone. KaiserDave is probably right about the three most normal candidates.

I sympathize with Morales, but that Adams statement is f***ed beyond belief.

[Never Made it to Graceland]

The only endorsement I Care about is the DSA.

[Never Made it to Graceland]

The only endorsement I Care about is the DSA.

They're probably gonna endorse Morales, with an outside chance of Stringer? I'm not sure.

That would be my guess. Definitely not Yang or Adams. Incidentally, that's also my preference now - Morales or Stringer. I would be okay with Garcia or Wiley.

[Never Made it to Graceland]

New poll

[Never Made it to Graceland]

President Biden: 69/19 (+50)
Governor Cuomo: 55/34 (+21)
Mayor DeBlasio: 26/58 (-32)

I just spotted this. I disagree with the mindless De Blasio hate but I'm not going to criticize someone for saying they disapprove, but if you say you approve of Cuomo in the same poll, you are a joke of a person.

[Never Made it to Graceland]

I was worried Brad Lander would back out the Comptroller race after Corey Johnson (eyeroll) jumped in, but he's fighting harder than ever. Big new endorsement. His reward presumably for endorsing her early in 2019.


https://gothamist.com/news/senator-elizabeth-warren-weighs-nyc-comptroller-race-endorsing-city-councilmember-brad-lander

Interesting, I haven't thought much about the comptroller race but that's an endorsement that has weight with me.

[Never Made it to Graceland]

Cuomo?

Uh, no.

https://twitter.com/JabariBrisport/status/1249033286304874496