NYC Mayor/2021 Megathread

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Max Rose is your 19th candidate to enter

[Donerail]

The heart of Jacobin's #take on Andrew Yang is that he would make housing too cheap and available to too many people, which is apparently a bad thing. I was not sold on Yang as a serious candidate and I still think he'd get chewed up by city hall, but they make a persuasive case in his favor.

[Donerail]

PPP today:

Mayoral frontrunner Andrew YANG 17%
Cop Eric Adams 16%
De Blasio heir Maya Wiley 7%
Former Council Speaker Christine Quinn 6%
Nonprofit CEO Dianne Morales 5
Comptroller and the "far and away frontrunner" Scott Stringer 5%
Finance dude Ray McGuire 4%

Second poll in the last few weeks to show Yang leading, Adams in a close second, and Stringer trailing. High marks for Cuomo, poor numbers for Blaz.

[Donerail]

Anyone but Yang, please, Yang is the type of candidate that online people think will govern well, but in actuality will not govern well

New York City has never elected a mayor who "governs well."

[Donerail]

https://twitter.com/AndrewYang/status/1350486277959856131
One underrated positive of Yang is that he'll stumble into good policy just because he rides a bike to work.

[Donerail]

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.

[Donerail]

I bet they'll give a list of 3-5 candidates and tell people to rank them at the top of their list. It prevents the DSA from throwing down a hard commitment on any imperfect candidate, it absolves them of any responsibility, and it shows they are committed to electoral reform.

Absolutely not — this is not how DSA electoral strategy works. They want endorsements to mean something in terms of volunteers and cash flowing in, so that the pol really owes their election to DSA and will owe them something once in office. Qualified, tepid citywide endorsements of multiple candidates that "absolves them of any responsibility" is the exact opposite of that strategy. At that point, the endorsement is basically meaningless, so why do it at all?

[Donerail]

Because your activists, and there are a lot of them in the gentrifying east side of the Hudson, demand that you don't leave the Progressive mayoral candidates out to dry even though they are getting electorally squeezed. As previously noted the more important races for NYC Progressives right now are for city council, but endorsing in a lower race and ignoring candidates like Morales because of poor polling seems designed to confuse a lot of the limited voter pool.

DSA is staying out of the mayoral race and focusing on five city council elections, because they have limited resources and want to focus those volunteer-hours where they'll actually make a difference (i.e. not in a citywide election). The activist groundswell that you are imagining for Morales or Menchaca does not exist in reality — this is not, so far as I can tell, particularly confusing to anyone other than you. If you disagree with the electoral strategy, feel free to join DSA and put it up for a vote.

More broadly, I think you misunderstand what DSA is and what a DSA endorsement means. DSA is not a rubber-stamp NGO that endorses every "progressive" candidate just so they can have another logo to put on their mailers — they are an ideologically-driven organization that views electoral work on behalf of socialist candidates as merely one part of building organizational power. They will not endorse candidates in races where the activists they can mobilize will have little influence on the outcome of the election (such as, for instance, a city-wide mayoral election).

I think a lot of things about polling are uncertain if Yang screws up and loses all hype, but her poor polling right now is likely real. The issue that I see is if you are going to endorse a ton of lower level primary candidates but just ignore the progressives in the main race because they can't keep up with Yang, tends to send the message of electoral gamesmanship when your brand is supposed to be  ideological purity.

The six DSA-endorsed candidates proudly identify themselves as socialists. Morales, so far as I can find, does not. There's your ideological purity.

[Donerail]

The best thing Andrew Yang could do if he really wants to win is to stop tweeting everything that comes into his brain the moment it comes into his brain

Nah, there's a strategy to it — tweeting about anything and everything keeps the focus on non-issues rather than Yang's actual policies.
https://twitter.com/IdahoBones/status/1375797654639235077

He has already corrected for the street vendors thing with a controversial tweet about dogs.

[Donerail]

I'm surprised Maya Wiley isn't connecting more. Why is that?

Running her campaign like Elizabeth Warren — including a lot of the same messaging and a lot of the same staff. She's doing about as well.

[Donerail]

Leaving aside Stringer and his team, that is horrifically damning on NY1 and whoever was the independent corroborator at the New York City Board of Elections. I understand dealing with public figures there's a higher bar on these issues, but if the NY1 journalist or the independent corroborator at the NYC BOE knew it was Esther Yang and not Andrew Yang, that's open-and-shut libel for knowing the truth and intentionally lying about it. The only other explanation is you didn't know it was Esther instead of Andrew, which means you're incompetent for checking a simple fact, which means the NY1 journalist should be at best demoted or lose his or her job reporting on local politics.

There is a third scenario: you not understanding how petitions work. Jean Kim did file petitions that helped get Andrew Yang on the ballot. Kim was circulating a petition that included the names of four candidates for different offices — a signature on the petition helps get all of those candidates on the ballot. You can see an example if you click on the article.

There is no Yang/Yang mixup here; both Kim and the Stringer camp agree that she circulated petitions that included Andrew Yang. The question is whether it's fair to characterize this as "working for Andrew Yang" — Kim is arguing that her primary motivation was supporting her friend Esther Yang.

[Donerail]

Unrelated to the recent topic of discussion, but still news: Yang says that he'll approach Garcia about joining his administration, should he win the mayoralty.

Not surprising since she seems like a very competent public manager.

But obviously why vote Yang in order to maybe get Garcia running the City when you could simply vote for Garcia for mayor?

Because you can do both! The goal here isn't to peel off Garcia #1 or #2 voters, it's to get them to put Yang above Adams for #4 or #5.

[Donerail]

Who did the Times' elevator operator endorse?

[Donerail]

On a related note, does anybody have suggestions on how to vote in NYC's version of IRV? I've been thinking that my 5th place vote should be the least objectionable of the popular candidates. Is there a better strategy?

Makes sense to give it to whoever you prefer in the Adams/Yang matchup — polling doesn't seem to support anyone else making it to the final round.

[Donerail]

She'll probably start rallying for Adams or Garcia or whoever's more progressive.

I will put $10 on AOC not hosting a rally for Eric Adams.

[Donerail]

She'll probably start rallying for Adams or Garcia or whoever's more progressive.

I will put $10 on AOC not hosting a rally for Eric Adams.

So I guess that narrows it down. Not like Maya Wiley has much of a chance at this point lol

If she endorses anyone (and I doubt she will) it'd be Morales, who seems to have locked up that lane.

[Donerail]

Would there be/is there a way to have a mock NYC election on the forum?

We've had a couple threads on the subject, both here and in Individual Politics; fairly difficult to simulate RCV without people posting their order in the thread.

[Donerail]

She went from 8% in the last Memerson to 21% two weeks later. Puts her on pace to take 47% of the vote four weeks from now. Great honer

[Donerail]

Morales collapsing
https://twitter.com/RossBarkan/status/1397316245142315009

[Donerail]

I honestly dont see the Garcia hype. She seems to be a pure manager, without much of a vision or sense of direction. Although ads dont mean much to me in general, her ads are content free and basically say you need to break glass to get something done (without making it about gender, explicitly at least).

All true, but god, have you seen the other guys?

[Donerail]

Anyways, progressives following the Joshua Collins blueprint will fail 10/10 times. This should come as no surprise.

The Bernie/DSA universe is entering a new low on their rollercoaster of momentum.

Not exactly the case — there is a reason DSA & AOC deliberately chose not to endorse Morales (and there's a reason Our Revolution solo endorsed Wiley). There’s obviously some overlap, but the Morales campaign was (the past tense is, I think, appropriate) fundamentally a left-liberal endeavor led by groups like the Working Families Party and various nonprofit orgs and progressive clubs. DSA & co. have been focused on a handful of City Council candidates. The difference reflects different political strategies and different theories of change — and one, I think, has been borne out more than the other.

[Donerail]

I still find it strange that the democratic field both this year & in virtually every other mayoral primary through recent history in NYC has been so weak.

The truth is that the mayoralty is just not that powerful. You can't raise taxes, set mass transit fares, build new subway lines or determine school funding — most of the job is taking the blame for things that happen because of decisions made in Albany.

[Donerail]

Our Revolution has been posting positive stuff on Maya Wiley for a while now, yet for some reason they won’t just endorse her already.

They endorsed her last week

https://twitter.com/mayawiley/status/1398076826245906436

[Donerail]

LMAOOOOOO

I gotta admit, Dems might be right. The DemSoc movement is dead.

Nina Turner is the lone bright light in a pit of failures.

Which YouTuber led you to that conclusion?

[Donerail]

LMAOOOOOO

I gotta admit, Dems might be right. The DemSoc movement is dead.

Nina Turner is the lone bright light in a pit of failures.

Which YouTuber led you to that conclusion?

The Failed Campaigns of Dianne Morales, Joshua Collins, Bernie Sanders, And Uselessness Of The Squad In Congress. Long channel name - but check 'em out sometime!

lmao if you think Morales (who has never identified as a socialist) or Collins (who ended up calling himself some sort of anarchist) are in any way... relevant, to anything