Ranked choice means you need to know how you would rank all the candidates! June 2021 Primary will essentially decide the mayoral race. How many do you rank? There are quite a few people running. Here is the latest list I could find. You get to rank 5 candidates.
The following isn't ranked in any order, just the order I considered them which wasn't organized.
Andrew Yang (46): I like the idea of a universal income so instead of housing vouchers the poor have choices. And $167 would feed me for a month. That would actually have the biggest impact on my life.
"Yang is a lawyer. He has worked at startups, ran a school-testing firm and founded and ran a nonprofit training people to be entrepreneurs in struggling cities. He has always had a job. And he has lived in New York for a quarter-century."
Links: NY Post Headline: NYC insiders ramping up attacks against Andrew Yang because he states the obvious.
As the front runner he's getting attacked: “Andrew Yang just can’t get his story straight and that makes him dangerous for New Yorkers,” Wiley spokesperson Julia Savel said. “Our city deserves a serious leader, not a mini-Trump who thinks our city is a fun play thing in between podcasts.” (Politico)
"Yang’s rivals are trying to define him as an out of touch neophyte with little knowledge of the city’s inner workings, while the frontrunner goes for the image of cheerleader-in-chief, rooting for the city’s comeback from the Covid-19 crisis." (Politico) Also, "Adams has gone after Yang’s plan to give cash payments to some New Yorkers, a modified version of the universal basic income program that was the centerpiece of his presidential campaign. Adams calls it “U-B-Lie” and a “snake oil” plan."
Also, "“Andrew Yang never spent a minute caring about how the city was run until he decided he wanted to run it — and it shows in his campaign of gimmicks, half-baked ideas, and telling every audience what they want to hear,” Stringer spokesperson Tyrone Stevens said. “We will continue to make the contrast between Andrew Yang’s dilettantism and Scott Stringer's deep commitment to New York City and proven track record of getting big things done in government.”"
Eric Adams (60), Brooklyn borough president, first African American to hold that position. Was a cop. So he seems like a good guy, but if we're going to be scaling back the police force, maybe he's not the right guy.
Links: NPR Brooklyn Borough President On Fighting Police Brutality From The Inside
Quotes: "I wasn’t a good student, I was a solid D+ student… I’m not going to beat you academically, I’m going to beat you with endurance. Never stop."
"Mr. Adams went on to say that in the 2021 race he was going to “out-white” Mr. Stringer, by winning over white constituencies." (NY Times)
Scott Stringer (60): Currently serving as the city’s chief fiscal officer, term-limited out of his current role like de Blasio and most of city government, he believes it’s his time. Career politician, someone with decades of public service.
Links: Gotham Gazette "Stringer has been a solid and steady liberal presence in New York politics and government for his entire adult life, unwaveringly supportive of key progressive causes like women’s reproductive and LGBTQ rights, gun control, and campaign finance reform."
And, "If he can secure enough first-place votes, in a large field Stringer could ride those second-place votes to victory in what is also known as instant-runoff voting."
And, "Under his political hat, he has for decades meticulously crafted alliances with prominent labor unions like the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) and, more recently, progressive left Democrats who are ascendant in his party to build an effective base that could help him win the mayoral race.
And, "In the Assembly, he was one of the few Democratic voices opposing deals cut by their own Speaker to weaken the rent laws, he wrote the bill to repeal Governor Pataki’s tax cuts for the wealthy, and he led the fight to pass once-in-a-generation rules reforms in Albany — other legislators booed at him when he ended 'empty-seat voting.' Twenty-one years ago, he was arrested after the police murder of Amadou Diallo, and nearly a decade ago, he spoke out against stop-and-frisk. As comptroller, he’s taken on climate deniers and launched the first major public divestment from fossil fuels.
And, "Stringer has yet to offer a bold vision for the city’s future. The next mayor of New York City could very well inherit multiple crises – a huge budget hole, widespread unemployment, continued unaffordability, a longstanding homelessness crisis, crumbling public housing, mistrust between police and communities, to name just a few."
Kathryn Garcia (51) ran the Sanitation Department as the 43rd Sanitation Commissioner. She went to UW, my alma mater! I like her housing plans. She wants to improve public transport and public spaces. I like her ideas to lessen the negative environmental impact. I like her ideas about food insecurity.
Links: "Garcia is offering herself to voters as a crisis manager and no-nonsense doer, a liberal who is more moderate than several candidates running campaigns further to the left, who is most focused on delivering basic city services, improving government efficiency"
And, "Garcia underscores the importance of making public officials accountable for solving problems and executing plans, some of which already exist but need someone like her to implement them"
Quote: “We’ve got to move away from a shelter strategy and to a housing strategy. We spend ~3B/yr on shelters that fail to adequately serve NYC families. Of that, $400M goes to rent hotel rooms that are temporary.”
City Council Speaker Corey Johnson: Johnson supports the Defund the Police movement. Queerty named Johnson one of the Pride50 “trailblazing individuals who actively ensure society remains moving towards equality, acceptance and dignity for all queer people".
Dianne Morales (53) is a single mother of 2 children. She's done good work in the community. She seems like a scrapper.
Link: "Morales is running the campaign furthest to the left, with her view of where New York City needs to go under the next mayor in part influenced by the devastating impacts of COVID-19 and all it has wrought and further exposed about racial, ethnic, and economic inequality in the city."
Maya Wiley (57) "Wiley has received what is probably the only coveted Trump bump in the mayoral race: Mary Trump, who wrote a tell-all about her uncle, hosted an online fundraiser for Wiley earlier this month." (Cubed)
Shaun Donovan (55) is housing specialist who served as United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development from 2009 to 2014, and Director of the US Office of Management and Budget from 2014 to 2017. Prior to that, he was the Commissioner of the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development from 2004 to 2009 under Mayor Michael Bloomberg. He's the inverse to Eric Adams, he went to all the right schools. Am I prejudiced against rich people? I'm sure he would do OK, but does he have ideas for food security? Housing is a huge issue for NYC.
He's raised the most money, and then his father gave him 2 million. I'm ambivalent about that statistic.
Link: "He said he would build a bus rapid transit network modeled on Mexico City and Bogota, with legal e-bikes and scooters filling in gaps. And unlike Mayor Bill de Blasio, who is shuttled around the city in an SUV, he promised to be a frequent straphanger."
He "vowed to revamp the “right to shelter,” which guarantees homeless New Yorkers a bed in a shelter, to instead be a “right to housing.”" OK maybe he's not class blind. He does have developed plans. We could do worse.
Ray McGuire was a career investment banker, and is a total newcomer to city politics.
General Links
Gothamist: Three Mayoral Candidates Commit to “Police-Free” Public Schools. Here's What That Means (Dianne Morales, Maya Wiley, and Shaun Donovan) "Education and youth advocates who support removal point to research that shows low-level encounters with law enforcement can lead to higher dropout rates and often to further criminal justice involvement for students down the line."
Anecdote: I asked who people were going to vote for at the park, and nobody knew anything, except one woman said she liked Kathryn Garcia, "she's very New York." I said she went to the UW, and she said she wished she went there. She wondered why I came here.
My ranked choices and why. These are my opinions:
I'm not voting for gender, heritage, sexuality, race or age, though those things might help get things done along certain lines! Maybe Garcia sounds so practical because I think women can be quite practical. She's got a lot of concrete ideas that would improve things without making a huge splash. Signals and signifiers are confusing. Maya Wiley is a black woman but her father died in a boating accident. That shouldn't count against her, and I'm sorry she lost her father. But boating isn't going to connect her to down and out who are struggling. Neither is being a professor. Fighting for civil rights is important. But can't you do that without being the mayor?
Eric Adams has said some things that push me away from him, but he's "keeping it real," so in a way I'm not afraid of the things when I think about them for a little bit. The idea of "out-whiting" someone is kind of offensive to me, but I won't cross him off the list for that. But bragging that he's a D+ student. Not sure about that one. Trying really hard not to judge him. Experiencing police brutality and then joining the force is a really awesome thing to do. Pretty cool guy, I like him. Not sure for Mayor.
I feel similarly about Wiley, she has some deep knowledge about important issues, but I'm not sure if being Mayor is where they are best worked on. She's awesome and she's done some good work. Not sure if I see her mixing it up with teamsters.
Being qualified: When you look at the resumes, who looks the most qualified based on past work experience? I'm sure they could all do it, but Yang hasn't worked in government. I think experience in government is important to work in the government. That rules out Ray McGuire.
Growing up in NYC doesn't really matter to me. Yang has been here for 25 years. Wiley has been her for some time after growing up in DC.
I like 1. Kathryn Garcia because I just felt reading her plans that they made sense, 2. Scott Stringer because he's worked to connect to people and has good experience, 3. Shaun Donovan because he's an expert on housing, the biggest issue. 4. Dianne Morales seems grounded and aware. 5. Maya Wiley because it's never a bad time to attack systematic racism.
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