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Mayoral Debate Highlights: Who Stood Out?
00:50:18
What did the final New York City mayoral debate reveal about the future of the race—and the city itself? Nicole Gelinas, John Ketcham, and Rafael Mangual break down the candidates’ best and worst moments, and what their performances signal for...
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- [00:09]
A
Hello, and welcome to another episode of the City Journal Podcast. I am your host, Rafael Mangual, and I am so happy to be joined by my brilliant colleagues. We've got John Ketchum and Nicole Jelinas, the great Nicole Jalinas. Welcome to the show.
- [00:22]
B
Thank you.
- [00:23]
A
So I want to just jump right in to the big news, which is the mayoral debate. Last night. You had Zoram Mamdani, Andrew Cuomo, and Curtis Lewa finally waking up from the dead, it seemed, you know, having it out on Stage at LaGuardia Community College. What did you all make of the debate? What were some of the big moments that kind of caught your attention? John, we'll start with you.
- [00:45]
B
So the biggest moment for me, I have an ear for policy. We're in the business.
- [00:51]
A
Sure. Yeah.
- [00:52]
B
I think it's apparent to everyone that Zoran Mamdani has a thin veneer on his proposals, and that came through when he refused to answer on the three citywide ballot questions relating to housing development.
- [01:11]
A
It wasn't so much a refusal as it was a very clear indication that he hadn't even given it any thought. I don't think he could have told you what the city ballot initiatives were had he been asked to follow up on that.
- [01:20]
B
Right. And voters are going to start early voting on Saturday. They're going to be asked to weigh in on these questions, and many debate viewers are going to see him as less prepared, potentially, than an ordinary voter.
- [01:36]
C
Yeah.
- [01:37]
B
And these are pretty significant ballot questions. They have not received as much attention as the mayoral debate, the mayoral race, but it was an opportunity for him to take a stance backing up his affordable housing proposals, and they would complement some of what he is saying in terms of new development, public investments, and so forth. But he just wouldn't go there.
- [02:02]
A
No, it was a big. It was a big swing and a miss. I definitely caught that. I mean, you know, to me, it just looked like he was a deer in the headlights in that moment. Like it was, you know, a true. Oh, you know what moment where. I mean, he just hadn't given it any thought. And it was that blank stare, I think was worth a thousand words. Nicole, what about you? What'd you think?
- [02:21]
C
I think overall, the big thing that stood out to me was that Andrew Cuomo did much better than he did in the first debate a week ago. He seemed awake. Maybe that's a Lowell bar. He seemed engaged, alert. He seemed to be having a good time, which we haven't seen that much from him over this campaign. Seems like a lot of times he's kind of just walking through it. He seemed more relaxed at getting some zingers across against Assemblyman Mamdani and Curtis Sliwa. I think most importantly, he finally figured out how to both respond to Sliwa's jabs against him from one side and also land some jabs against Mamdani on the other, which last week he seemed really lost between the two. A couple of examples on the crime exchange, I thought Cuomo very effectively explained why and how Jessica Tish is just going to have a very hard time working under Mamdani. And that to philosophers really do not meet very closely there. And he did that despite the fact that he still carries this bail reform and discovery reform and everything else baggage. He seemed more willing to be a little bit assertive on that issue instead of on the defensive. And also on housing, I thought Cuomo's answers on things like can you really do a rent freeze? You cannot just. The mayor cannot just decree a rent freeze. I thought Cuomo gave a pretty good technocratic, but also made that point across to the public that this is not as easy as it seems.
- [04:02]
A
That was, I think, kind of the strongest. Those were the strongest moments for him in the debate where he was pointing out the barriers that Zorramadani would have to surmount in order to enact his policy agenda. And I think once people start to understand the number of stars that have to align for him to do the things that he's promising, it's very, very unlikely that any of that is gonna come to pass.
- [04:22]
B
But Mamdani now has had multiple opportunities to respond to whether the rent freeze would be legal.
- [04:29]
A
Right.
- [04:30]
B
In fact, I think the Manhattan Institute deserves some credit here because that theory first appeared in City Journal. That's right. Christian Brown, an attorney who had worked in the Giuliani administration, raised the challenge that the mayor does not set rent stabilized rent increases. That responsibility belongs to the Rent Guidelines Board, which is an independent body.
- [04:57]
A
Right.
- [04:57]
B
Composed of mayoral appointees. Yes, but on a staggered board. So there's a term of years that they serve and they cannot be fired except for cause. So the law contemplates an independence and it also stipulates that the RGB members have to factor things like property tax increases, water sewer rates and owners operating costs.
- [05:23]
A
Right.
- [05:23]
B
What Mamdani is essentially proposing is to put members on who will only agree to a 0% rent increase for four consecutive years. It amounts to a great prejudgment of what should be an independent determination by the argument.
- [05:39]
A
Essentially what he should be doing is telling them to allow for the smallest possible increase without doing undue harm to landlords. But what he's really saying is that it doesn't really matter. He doesn't care about any of that. He just wants them to zero it out, which is incredibly irresponsible. But I did think it was a telling moment where he just came out and said, yeah, well, I get to appoint the members. I mean, so it's just he is going to use power and bulldoze his way to whatever he wants, ironically, something.
- [06:08]
C
That Cuomo was often justifiably accused of doing. So you have Cuomo here explaining, oh, no, you can't just do that. Here's how the process actually works. And I think in addition to legal and constitutional issues, Cuomo also effectively said on the practical issue here, if you freeze the rent, landlords to property owners will take more units off the market because they won't be able to make a profit on those units. And so you are reducing the supply of affordable housing. Now, again, you know, this is a conundrum of Andrew Cuomo. What he said was good. Knowledgeable voters also know he's partly responsible for the 2000. So this is, you know, both. This is a story of Cuomo throughout this campaign. You have to put aside some of what you know about him.
- [06:57]
A
About him. Right.
- [06:58]
C
But that's, you know, that's politics. It's. No one is coming up here with clean hands.
- [07:04]
A
Well, I've got. I mean, I've got a story on this that I think I've told you, John. But, you know, in 2019, toward the end of that year, my wife and I were moving to Queens in anticipation of our first kid being born. We found this great apartment in Kew Gardens that we loved, and we wanted. It was under renovation, but it was going to be ready in about a month, which would have been fine. We told the realtor, like, we're going to go ahead and take it. And three days later, we didn't have a lease. So we called him up and he was like, oh, I'm really sorry, but the landlord, because of this new law, has decided to stop all the renovations. And the building is just going to take those apartments off the market and write the losses off. And we were, I mean, we tried everything because we loved the apartment so much. It was like in the perfect spot. It was right by the Long Island Railroad. Like, well, you know, we'll. We'll pay $500 more in rent. Well, no, you can't do that because it's rent stabilized. And, okay, well, it came with a parking spot. I was like, I'll pay $1,500 a month with a parking spot. And they were like, no, sorry. It was just not worth. I mean, and that was a real impact, you know, in. In my life. And, yeah, I absolutely remember that Cuomo was a part of that, just the way that he was a part of quo reform and discovery reform and raise the age, which came up yesterday as well. But, you know, as. As well as Cuomo did, relative to his prior performances, it did seem to me like he has still not quite come to terms with the fact that his resume is not going to get him by in this race.
- [08:21]
C
I just wish he would have said sometime during the campaign. A big difference between me and Mom Dottie is I've made all of my mistakes. And demonstrate how he's learned from these m. I think some of the people who are more likely to vote for Sliwa because they're aware of the bail reform and raise the age and discovery Reform and the 2009 property protections laws, they might be willing to give Cuomo a chance if he would just say, look, I should not have done bail reform without the danger standard. I made a mistake, and I'm learning from that mistake. But like many people, he has a hard time acknowledging that and moving past it, and I think it has hurt him a little. Something.
- [09:06]
B
Something else I found curious that he didn't acknowledge throughout most of the campaign, at least, didn't really become a big campaign issue, was the fact that he built a lot of impressive infrastructure in the Tappan Zee Bridge.
- [09:19]
A
Well, he mentioned that yesterday.
- [09:21]
B
Finally. Finally.
- [09:22]
A
He talked about a lot. Cuomo Bridge, belatedly.
- [09:24]
B
Well, now, the Mario Cuomo Bridge, of course. He rebuilt LaGuardia Airport.
- [09:29]
A
Yeah, he mentioned that.
- [09:30]
B
An amazing triumph. The old laguardia was truly dilapidated and unsuitable for New York City's needs. The new one was, it's in fact, so advanced that Zoram Adani took a swipe at his ordering the fountain that has musical capabilities. And I think it delights many people when they come and they put it on Instagram and so forth. But he had the ability to be more, say, positive in his campaign messaging, saying, you know, I can rebuild New York City because we do need infrastructure, and I've done it. And it's pretty uncommon to have anyone with that kind of capability. I've done it in the biggest projects in the state's history. I can do it again. We'll rebuild the Brooklyn Promenade, the Triple cancer lever. The BQE needs substantial rehabbing. This is not a job for someone who has zero experience in the actual governing.
- [10:30]
A
I agree with that on substance, but I think that the audience's eyes would have glazed over, and I think he's realized that. I think the proof is in the success that Zorramadani's enjoyed because his campaign has been a mile wide and less than an inch deep. You know, the reality is, is that the people who are making decisions, who are, you know, answering polls, who are driving the narratives, and these are. They don't care about the details, apparently. You know, obviously they don't. They don't care about experience. They care about someone who can say the right thing, who can sound good saying it and make people laugh and smile. And so, Rahmam, Daddy's checked those boxes. And again, I just. It's frustrating to some degree as someone who cares about policy, but, you know, it's just the reality of our. Of our time.
- [11:15]
C
Yeah. Mandani last night seemed more nervous than usual. He talked faster than he usually talked. He didn't smile as much. And it was striking just because there was really nothing for him to be more nervous about. I mean, no one really landed any critical points against him. And that. Not that the criticisms of him are not substantive, but if they were going to land, they already would have. You know, there's no great new line to use against him, but he just seemed a little rattled. I wonder if he's getting nervous as the reality of this hits him. And one place where Cuomo showed you need to understand infrastructure was with Rikers Island.
- [11:57]
A
I mean, Cuomo, clearly, your plan kind of came up.
- [12:00]
C
Yeah. And it's like Cuomo said, you know, you've got these four borough. He called them county jails, but you've got these four borough jails under contract. They're way budget. And Mamdani kind of tried to respond by saying, oh, you can't cancel contracts. That will cost money. Well, yes, it'll cost money. But Cuomo effectively said, you want to cut your losses, even if that costs some money and do something else and rebuild new jails on Rikers Island. And Cuomo also said, you know, need to negotiate with contractors like the contracts. Yeah, they do business in New York City again.
- [12:38]
A
Exactly.
- [12:39]
C
So they're not going to nail the city to the wall on every dollar that they're owed.
- [12:45]
A
A couple of things here. One, there was an important moment in that because Zohramdani never actually answered the question of what his plan was. Going to be when August 2027 comes around and Rikers has to close by law and no jails will have been built. But for those of you who are watching and don't know, Nicole wrote an amazing paper, was it two years ago now, that laid out a plan to rebuild Rikers on Rikers Island. And so maybe you can just talk a little bit about that idea because I do think that it's caught on with the CU campaign.
- [13:16]
C
Yeah, I mean, it's not that hard. You just take each jail facility on Rikers island, rebuild a new facility, move the people into each new facility. As you open it up, you can address many of the problems at Rikers Islands without having to close down Rikers island and move the jails to the four boroughs. The culture issue, this is more an issue with the corrections department and issues with management. No, the things like people have to wait hours to get wanded before they go into the jail. That is a corrections work issue. It's not going to be fixed. By moving the jails, things like transportation to Rikers island, you can have much better free Rikers dedicated bus service. Go to a few different stops within the city where most of your visitors are coming from and take them directly to the island. And have the on island bus also work much better because once, once the family members get to Rikers island, they're sitting there waiting for an hour just to take the corrections bus to the individual jail facility. I mean, that's easily fixed. Environmental remediation, we've done this before. You just build up the landfill, you could do some other remediation as needed. But none of these problems are insurmountable. And I think Cuomo does realize that belatedly. But that's better than nothing.
- [14:44]
B
Better than, and they're all better than the alternative of building the borough jails, which are coming with a $16 billion price tag and assuming we don't go over anymore.
- [14:55]
C
Right, yeah.
- [14:56]
B
And significant concerns from the people who.
- [14:59]
A
Live in those neighborhoods and significant challenges just embedded in the fact that we've never done this before. There's never been a high rise jail in a dense urban neighborhood. I mean, what happens if there's a fire? What happens if there's a carbon monoxide leak or a gas leak and you have to evacuate this place? What are the security. Are you just gonna have people who are awaiting trial on murder one just filing out the door like it's a, you know, a high school fire drill? I mean, I don't think the city's really thought this through. But I do think that both Cuomo and Sliwa did a good job of sort of highlighting the impending very dark reality, which is that, hey, if August 2027 comes around and we don't have anywhere to put these folks, we're just going to release 7,000 inmates into the street. I mean, what's that going to look like? And even if the four borough based jails are built by then, which is not going to happen, thousand percent not going to happen, their maximum capacity is still going to be about half of what the current jail population is now. So we're just gonna overnight decarcerate by 50%. I mean, we did that over the course of 10 years and it probably helped boost the crime spike that we experienced in 2020, 21 and 22. I don't see how this isn't a bigger issue.
- [16:14]
C
Right. And Mamdani, this is the second time he also said it at the vital City Forum a month or so ago. He has used that Phra do everything in my power to make sure Rikers closes in two years. And that gives him a lot of room. And that when you get to 27, he's still blaming Adams and he's still blaming de Blasio. Like, I wanted to do this, but I just couldn't do it.
- [16:39]
B
And he was setting himself up for that by saying that Adams has put the city in the position of it being practically impossible. And so that's given himself a mile.
- [16:49]
A
Even though, you know, the. When he was signing on to the DSA's Platform for Decarceration back in 2019, one of the sort of core components of that document was that they opposed the building of the four new jails to replace Rikers Island. They just wanted to close Rikers island, expand bail reform, and zero out the jail population in New York City. No one seems to remember that. I remember it, but it is kind of annoying. But Nicole, you said something earlier that I think you're completely right about, which is that Zoran seemed nervous. I definitely got that too. And I think one of the sort of main indications was that his campaign leaked ahead of the debate that he was going to ask Jessica Tisch to stay on as the New York City Police Commissioner, which he confirmed on stage. And that's interesting to me for a couple reasons. One is that, you know, what Andrew Cuomo said was there's so many incongruities between Zoram Mamdani's stated policy positions, now his recent policy positions, that he has kind of sort of disavowed but not really. And what Jessica Tisch has done to bring safety back to New York City, I mean, her strategy has revolved around hotspots policing that's intelligence driven, that's focused on gangs, that is critical of some of the infrastructure around criminal justice reform, like bail and discovery and Raise the Age. And yet Zoram Mamdani is pro discovery reform. Said on stage yesterday he wouldn't do anything to change Raise the Age has stood by bail reform, has come out against intelligence driven policing in mostly low income, minority neighborhoods where crime concentrates because he thinks that it's racist. He's come out in favor of abolishing the gang database, which Jessica Tischa says is absolutely critical to the work that they do. I mean, how does this work?
- [18:44]
B
Well, he could have it both ways. Maybe he could say, I'm going to keep Jessica Tisch on, but effectively create a hostile policy work environment. Right. And say, well, you know, this is the new sheriff in town and, you know, if you don't like it, well, you always have the option. Then it's on her to do.
- [19:02]
C
Exactly.
- [19:03]
A
Yeah.
- [19:03]
C
Even something like vending, she's been better on trying to police illegal vending despite a lot of constraints on her. And when they asked the question about the federal raid on the Canal street counterfeit vendors, Mandani's answer was just, well, we need more vending licenses. Well, we're not. Even if we have more vending licenses.
- [19:25]
A
They'Re never going to be licensed on counterfeit goods.
- [19:28]
C
License people to sell, you know, Louis Vuitton pocketbooks. So it just. That answer doesn't make any sense. And something like the policing of the E bikes. She's been giving out criminal summonses to the E bike drivers who are going the wrong way and riding on sidewalk. Because if you give them civil summonses because they don't have a driver's license, there's no incentive for them to show up and pay the summons. I mean, how would he continue backing her up on giving criminal summonses to the E bike drivers? I mean, he may very well repudiate all his positions, and that would not be a bad thing. But he just has to realize that that's kind of what he's setting himself up for.
- [20:10]
A
I think, John, I think you're right about this. I think really what he's trying to do is, you know, sort of save himself the political harm of saying he's going to choose somebody else who's more reform minded, like a Rodney Harrison, for example, who, for those of you who don't know, is a former executive within the nypd and then force Jessica Tisch to leave. Which kind of, you know, raises an interesting question. It's like, what would happen if she preempted him now and just said, well, I wouldn't have said. I won't say yes. And here's why. I wonder, you know, what that would do, you know, for the electorate that Zoraham Hamdani seems to be courting by making this choice. But I do think that it reveals some kind of nerves on his part. I think he, for whatever reason, is feeling some kind of pressure on this, which is a good thing.
- [21:03]
B
Ballot questions, too. Why won't he take a stand on these? And also mayoral control. What is that going to look like? So, for context, Mayor Bloomberg in 2002 won control over the city's school system. So it used to be in dozens of decentralized districts. And Mayor Bloomberg thought that accountability was paramount and it should be centralized under the mayor's direction and a single school chancellor. And so he got the law change in Albany, and it's been like that ever since. Subject to periodic renewals by the legislature, Mamdani opposes the continuation of mayoral control while also taking a stand that he believes in mayoral accountability. Well, the two are in great tension, I would say, just shy of logically contradictory. The whole point of mayoral control is to establish mayoral accountability. The buck stops with him and the school's chancellor. But he won't go on the record to say what his educational vision would look like, what his DOE governance structure would look like, and how he would try to maintain the standards and the excellence that he lauded yesterday on the stage.
- [22:22]
A
No, I think that's right. I think that's right.
- [22:24]
C
He just seems really uninterested in education. I mean, that always strikes me that he just doesn't care. I thought that was another good point that Cuomo made, that you want to suddenly be the mayor of grocery stores, but you don't want to do this job that the mayor already rightly, which is run the school system. It's just never for whatever ideological reason, other than universal child care, which is not education. He tries to talk as little about K through 12 or pre K through 12 as he can.
- [22:58]
A
And then, of course, what's he going to say, right? I mean, other than, you know, whatever the teachers unions that support him want him to say.
- [23:04]
C
Right. And he wants CUNY to be free. But that's another ideological.
- [23:08]
A
We tried this with CUNY, what, in the 70s, right? In 70s and 80s didn't work out so great. The quality of the education went down, the dropout rate went through the roof.
- [23:20]
B
Turns out skin in the game is important.
- [23:22]
A
Exactly right.
- [23:23]
B
And for the mayor too, to have a sense that, no, we're not going to let dozens of districts have their own say on the way that they're going to educate children when that system was shown to breed corruption, inefficiency and do a great disservice to New York's children. And we spend $41 billion a year on this system to be uninterested in that and instead be interested in creating five pilot grocery stores for $100 million.
- [23:59]
A
But to the extent that he has talked about education, it has been to sort of push things that kind of of reduced the emphasis on excellence. Right. I mean, he's come out against gifted and talented programs starting at an early age. For a while there he was against and then flip flopped on the specialized high schools, which he's a beneficiary of. So, yeah, I think ultimately he's not particularly interested in the city taking accountability for these results, in part because I think he understands that the results are not going to be very good. And it's been a huge weak point of Brandon Johnson in Chicago, who I think he looks to as kind of an example of what a sort of democratic socialist mayor might look like in a big American city. And one of the biggest points of failure for Brandon Johnson in Chicago has been the poor performance of Chicago public schools. So to the extent that he can put distance between himself and that issue, it actually makes a little bit of sense.
- [24:59]
B
Hence, it's part of the thesis here. Why is he so risk averse?
- [25:04]
C
Yeah.
- [25:05]
B
Is he getting nervous? Does he and his campaign, do they know something that we don't?
- [25:11]
A
I don't know. I mean, it's a little late for an October surprise.
- [25:14]
B
A little late, but two days away from early voting.
- [25:19]
A
I mean, you know, there are a couple of things I want to talk about. Nicole, you mentioned the ICE raid. You know, so I'm sure everyone who's watching has heard, but a couple of days ago, day before yesterday, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents conducted a raid on Canal street, which is infamous in New York City for being the site of a very large counterfeit goods market. Right. So you have, you know, fake Louis Vuitton purses and fake Burberry scarves and, you know, illegal. I'm a date myself. Now, I was not going to say DVDs, but, you know, it used to be illegal DVDs and CDs and, you know, all kinds of illicit merchandise. Recently there's been something of an open air drug market where you have people selling pot on tabletops and you know, who are not clearly licensed pot shops by New York State or New York City. And they made nine arrests. It was a pretty targeted operation. Right. It wasn't like a massive sweep. They didn't arrest everybody on the street. They made nine arrests of people who were engaged in selling these counterfeit goods, all of whom were illegal aliens who are likely now going to be deported, many of whom had significant criminal histories, including violent criminal histories. And people lost their minds. Protesters came out, the ICE agents were getting cursed out, having things thrown at them, being pushed and shouted at. And it was the first question in the debate yesterday, which, you know, struck me because it seems like the outrage is about the enforcement of a law that everyone knows exists. Right. It's both against federal and state law to trade in trademark counterfeit goods. And there's good reason for that. You know, the counterfeit trade, the trademark counterfeit market, is an illicit market that funds all kinds of terrible activities. It's a big revenue source for transnational gangs, for even terrorist organizations.
- [27:12]
C
Human trafficking.
- [27:13]
A
Human trafficking. I mean, this, you know, and for, for those of you who don't understand, like, one of the reasons that criminals like trading in counterfeit goods is that they're very cheap to make, especially when you consider that they're made largely with slave labor overse, they're a lot easier to smuggle because they're not going to, you know, they don't have a particular scent. There's no drug sniffing dog for, you know, fake Louis Vuitton. And to the extent that you get caught as a seller, you know, enforcement trends over the years have been relatively lax. Right. So you're not looking at the same amount of time that you would look at if you were caught selling crack or, you know, fentanyl or something like that.
- [27:52]
B
So they're not paying sales tax and, or income taxes either.
- [27:55]
A
Yeah. So it's an incredibly profitable industry for a lot of, you know, transnational gangs and terrorist organizations to be involved in. In fact, the 93 World Trade center bombing, the Blind Sheikh financed that in part through the selling of counterfeit goods, at least, you know, according to an investigation that was done by Congress. So, like, this is, there's, there is a really good reason to enforce the law here. And it seemed like when the candidates got asked about this, they were e shocked that the federal government would ever do something like this or appalled that you know, someone could get in trouble for selling counterfeit goods. And it just, it blew my mind. What were your reactions to that?
- [28:43]
B
Yeah, that it's also a nuisance problem.
- [28:46]
A
Yeah.
- [28:46]
B
And lots of New Yorkers, I think, don't particularly like having this on the street.
- [28:52]
A
Oh, they absolutely don't. I mean, there was an article in Spectrum News, by the way, which hosted the debate last night that was published, I want to say, a month ago, where they cited a, A, a petition, an online petition that had garnered like over 1500 signatures or something like that, of area residents who were complaining and asking the NYPD to do something about the open air counterfeit goods market on Canal street because it had ruined the quality of life. And that article had cited previous enforcement actions taken both by the NYPD and federal officials.
- [29:24]
B
Right.
- [29:25]
A
Like, there was literally nothing unprecedented about what happened a couple of days ago on Canal street. And yet that word unprecedented was used, used to describe the operation.
- [29:33]
B
Right. If the NYPD had enforced against illegal vending, it would certainly not have created the type of backlash that it did. It clearly was.
- [29:43]
A
The Quality of Life Division did do a raid. I want to say it was like.
- [29:47]
B
In March of this year, but infrequent. Spotty at best.
- [29:53]
C
Right, right.
- [29:54]
B
But the fact that it was ICE raised the salience dramatically.
- [29:59]
A
But ICE has, like, this is part of ICE's jurisdictional remit.
- [30:02]
C
Like it's customs.
- [30:03]
A
Yeah, it's a customs violation. So they are the primary enforcement agency at the federal level for the counterfeit goods, you know, problem. Right. So they have a massive presence at ports where they are inspecting big shipping containers and regularly seizing millions and millions of dollars worth of trademark counterfeit goods.
- [30:24]
B
Oh, sure. Legally. That's all exactly right. I'm saying that's the reason why there was so much outrage and New Yorkers going up to these officers simply because they're.
- [30:38]
A
Well, I mean, it doesn't help that you have Andrew Cuomo yesterday basically saying that they were outside of their jurisdiction and threatening to have used the NYPD to push them out. He's going to start a standoff and have the NYPD start arresting ICE agents for doing things that they have obvious federal jurisdiction to do. It is a federal crime in Title 18 of the US Code under Section 2320 to trade in counterfeit goods. This is absolutely their jurisdiction.
- [31:07]
C
Right. And this is one of these cases, as with many things Trump, that if government does not competently enforce similar laws itself on the local and state level, people get so frustrated that they, they want the federal government to Come in. I mean, it's a provocation that you can't walk on Canal Street. And, you know, it's gotten progressively worse as we've pulled back on enforcing these laws over the past decade. Where, yeah, you used to have some pocketbook vendors, but they were kind of into shadows, they were nervous, and now they've just taken over the entire sidewalk. They actually get mad at you sometimes if you're trying to walk on the public sidewalk because you're kind of in their way. You know, you're encroaching on their blanket. They're fighting with each other over their own jurisdiction. There's drug sales mixed in here as well. So. And this is a block away from the courthouses, the federal court, the state court, and the civil and criminal county courts. So this is a real provocation that the city allows us to go on within plain sight of everybody who commutes to the courthouse. You know, you are putting up with day to day crime and disorder just to go to work at the courthouse, which is kind of ironic. And this is something that the city and state should have dealt with with long ago. So if you don't want the federal government coming in here, what's your. What are you going to do about it instead? And not. No candidate, except for Cuomo, who at least implied in saying we don't need ice to enforce quality of life, kind of implied that we should be enforcing quality life. But none of them had a very good answer on, okay, this is not acceptable. Here's what I would do instead.
- [32:57]
B
It's also a problem for people with disabilities.
- [33:00]
A
Yeah, I mean, try rolling a wheelchair down that street. I mean, it's impossible. And Zoramdani had a very strange answer to this question during the debate, which was that, well, what we really need to do is just move on some of these city council initiatives to essentially legalize street vending and lower the transaction costs of selling things on the street. Which is so interesting to me for a couple of reasons. One is that it completely goes against the progressive massive history of being pro regulation. Right. I mean, this is essentially a libertarian policy proposal. It's like, well, anybody should be able to sell whatever they want on the street, irrespective of whether they're licensed by the city. And, you know, no oversight, no fees. No. I mean, like, that is not the kind of progressive line that you would normally get.
- [33:48]
B
Private appropriation of public land.
- [33:50]
A
Yeah.
- [33:50]
B
For private benefit.
- [33:51]
A
Exactly. It's exactly right. But on top of that, it also would do nothing to have stopped that Raid, because again, the raid, the jurisdictional hook for the federal action was the fact that they were committing a federal crime, which you cannot repeal through a city council of Right.
- [34:10]
C
And he gave at the vital city forum, he gave us very similar answer. When Errol Lewis from Spectrum asked. Errol said he went to the West Indian Day parade. There were vendors selling illegal alcohol all over the place, including to minors. You know, what are you going to do about selling illegal alcohol on street? And Mamdani's answer was the same. We need more vending licenses. Well, we're not going to give people licenses to sell unregulated alcohol to minors. So I think this is an instance where it's already kind of bad. So we, we can't blame him. But the baseline could get much worse when he takes office. If the vendors realize this really is a free for all. Nobody is going to enforce this at all. You know, a bad situation has potential to get much, much worse. Including on Roosevelt Avenue.
- [35:03]
A
No, I think that's right. I think that's right. And Roosevelt Avenue is where you have a sort of massive illicit market in prostitution that has really pissed off a lot. Lot of local residents there. I know a couple people who live, you know, right off of Roosevelt Avenue in Elmhurst, and they are just absolutely mortified by the vagrancy and the, you know, just blatant violations of the law that are occurring along that sort of very main thoroughfare. Right. I mean, that's like it's an artery through that neighborhood.
- [35:34]
B
Something else Mamdani has tried to distance himself from.
- [35:37]
A
Right.
- [35:38]
B
He has stated that he is not or has never supported the legalization of prostitution.
- [35:43]
A
But the decriminalization, which is a, you know, it's kind of a distinction without a difference in some ways. But. But yeah, I mean, again, on stage yesterday, he says, you know, no, we're not going to arrest, you know, the people who are in are. Are doing this, which is, you know, it's like, okay, but I, I don't think that what you're inviting is going to be very good for the city of New York. So, yeah, I mean, it was an interesting debate for a lot of issues that people care about became a little bit clearer. But the question is, is that enough to really change what has been something of an inevitable end result for a couple of months now, at least, if not longer. So we'll have to wait and see.
- [36:33]
B
Well, Curtis is in the race. He has bucked all attempts to get him to exit, even to the point.
- [36:41]
A
Of quitting his very popular radio show yesterday. It was an incredible moment on. He was with Sid Brosenberg and basically said, I will never step foot in. I mean, he views it as kind of a betrayal by, you know, by Sid. By John Katsametides, who runs the station, also has a show to ask him to get out of the race, which is understandable.
- [37:03]
C
Like, I. I completely agree or not agree, but I think it's reasonable for people to try to persuade Curtis Lewis voters to vote for Cuomo instead. But that is different from the pressure to get Curtis Sliwa to drop out of the race. I do think there are.
- [37:24]
A
Because, I mean, if he's still in the race, then why, why. Why still be in the race if you're asking his voters to vote for Quantum?
- [37:32]
C
I think because there are implications to telling someone who won a major party ballot line in a city in which.
- [37:40]
A
That major party has zero incidence.
- [37:43]
C
I mean, they're. They're sort of blaming Slila as the proxy for a lot of problems, including that nobody contested the line. If they. If they had wanted to run a different. And perhaps stronger. On policy and biography, Republican candidates, candidate, the state and county Republican operation should have thought of that, you know, a year ago.
- [38:07]
A
I'm sure they did. But I also think that they had sort of come to the conclusion that it doesn't matter who wins the Republican primary because New York is suddenly not enough.
- [38:15]
C
It does.
- [38:16]
B
Right. They could have also put something of a placeholder weak candidate.
- [38:21]
A
Sure.
- [38:21]
B
And used that leverage to extract concessions from Cuomo.
- [38:25]
A
Yeah.
- [38:26]
B
To say, we'll pull out, but you've.
- [38:29]
A
Got to agree to accomplish. But they would have had to have anticipated the situation that we're in. I don't think anybody anticipated that Zora Mamdani was going to kind of sail to victory with a very easy campaign. I mean, I remember reading pieces a few months ago, you know, in very reputable publications, basically saying that Zelnor Miri and Zoram Hamdani were going to be confused from one another on palettes and that neither of them would go anywhere because both of their first names started with Z. So, yeah, I just. I don't think anyone really saw this coming. But I. I mean, it is. It is interesting because Cuomo seems to be. Not Cuomo, us. Leewa seems to be resisting an enormous amount of pressure, not just from his friends, you know, like Sid Rosenberg and John Katsimatis, but also, you know, from very powerful New Yorkers like Bill Ackman, who's kind of been going, you know, scorched earth to push on him. So, yeah, you know, the polls were.
- [39:25]
B
Wrong during the primary, by and large, or they at least didn't capture Mandani's last minute surge. They could be wrong again this time. I mean, you have a couple of things that are happening. Mayor Adams just announced moments ago that he's going to endorse Governor Cuomo.
- [39:43]
A
Yeah.
- [39:44]
B
And they sat courtside together at the Knicks opening game last night, you know, flashing thumbs up signs. That's one thing. Maybe a modest bump, but maybe a meaningful bump, especially among black voters who are already predisposed to voting for Cuomo.
- [39:58]
A
Right.
- [40:00]
B
And maybe the polls are not capturing the electorate as it will turn out on election day. We have an open letter by about 800 rabbis now discussing the feeling of, you know, like that was another parody.
- [40:18]
A
Moment during the debate. Because it did seem like Errol Lewis was trying to minimize that by saying it was like it was a few or several several. And Cuomo, Jung was like, no, no, not several at the time. It was like 680 years.
- [40:30]
C
And that's a place where Cuomo finally landed a good line against Mandani. When Mandani was waxing about how he's going to create safe spaces against anti Semitism and Cuomo said you were going to be the savior of the Jewish people. I thought that was effective. He made that point without sounding too negative or dour, which is hard to do. If he had been doing that all along. It might have a very different race by this point.
- [41:00]
B
And the why won't you BDS Uganda I thought was pretty powerful.
- [41:04]
A
He never answered, which he never answered. So for those of you who aren't familiar with this exchange, Zoram Mamdani was photographed a couple weeks ago with one of the political leaders in Uganda whose.
- [41:17]
B
Name is Rebecca Kadaga. Rebecca Kadaga, Deputy Prime Minister.
- [41:20]
A
Deputy Prime Minister who has infamously led a campaign against homosexuality within the state of Uganda and helped to lead the.
- [41:30]
B
Legislation for the anti Homosexuality act of.
- [41:33]
A
20 criminalizes simply being gay, which is, you know, completely at odds with the tone and tenor and substance of Zo Rahmandani's campaign. I mean, here he is doing videos with, you know, drag queens and promoting that on Twitter. So, I mean, it was. Or X, I should say. I mean, it was kind of interesting because Cuomo called him out and said, okay, well, hey, you say that we should boycott and div and sanction these other states like Israel for doing things that violate human rights. Well, here's something we all agree is a human rights violation. Right. I mean, what does human rights campaign exist to do except push on this issue? And yet he did not answer that question.
- [42:18]
B
He did not.
- [42:19]
A
The only question that Cuomo got to ask him, by the way, because there was only one question allowed during that cross examination section of the debate, and he didn't answer it. I think everybody noticed.
- [42:29]
B
Agreed.
- [42:31]
A
So here's our closer. Do you think the debate makes a difference in the outcome of this election?
- [42:38]
B
I think it does in the margins.
- [42:40]
A
Okay.
- [42:40]
B
And that matters because Mamdani wins with a majority. That feels a lot different than if he wins with a plurality.
- [42:47]
A
Interesting.
- [42:47]
B
Okay. Remember, a lot of his platform depends on cooperation with Albany. They're going to look at these numbers and say, well, how much are we going to give him of what he's asking for? If he wins with the majority, they've got to give him a good amount. If he wins with a plurality, they can pump the brakes a bit and say, we'll give you something, but not everything, or at least a whole lot less. And so the government is going to.
- [43:16]
A
Be under more pressure in the coming year of that election.
- [43:20]
B
Absolutely. But the polish of Mamdani's rhetoric, and I think has come off a bit. People have seen and heard the same points over and over, and now seems.
- [43:32]
A
Like his answer to every policy question is spend money the city doesn't have or enact some legislation he doesn't have the power to enact.
- [43:40]
B
Right, Right. But he says these things sort of like in routine fashion. Right. They're very polished and rhetorically effective. But on the fourth of two debates in the primary, two debates now in the general, it's time to talk a little bit about the substance.
- [43:55]
A
Right.
- [43:55]
B
And to the extent that, you know, he did it was either underwhelming or it was lacking.
- [44:00]
A
Yeah.
- [44:00]
B
And so, I mean, it's. Voters can see that.
- [44:03]
A
It's not surprising. I think voters can also see the fact that, you know, outside of the debate, which is, you know, where they're getting 15 second answers, 30 second answers, where it's very easy to filibuster.
- [44:12]
B
Right.
- [44:12]
A
Sarah Mohammedani has not subjected himself to a real cross examination by someone who is critical of his campaign. I mean, that used to be a tradition where major candidates and big, significant salient races would actually sit for an interview with someone that they knew was going to give them a hard time. I think voters deserve that. He's not given it to them. And I don't think he has any reason to now because it can only do him harm. But I do think that there are a lot of indications that he wouldn't fare very well in that kind of interaction.
- [44:43]
B
Cuomo did take him to task on it. Right. You haven't passed a single law on education or housing.
- [44:50]
A
The things that he says are massive problems and not just pass, but has even introduced the bill. So. Yeah, I mean, but again, in Mamdani's defense on this point, I mean, neither has Andrew Cuomo sat for a similar kind of interview. But yeah. What about you, Nicole? What do you think? Do you think last night makes a difference?
- [45:11]
C
I think to the extent that it makes a closer race and I try to learn my lesson about not predicting election results, anything can happen. But if it is only a plurality and not a majority, I think Mamdani will have to be more mindful if he is rationally thinking about his own reelection, that a lot of people are worried about my approach, particularly on crime and disorder, and that if crime and disorder start to go up in the numbers and also in the perception that is going to put a lot of the rest of my agenda in paradigm. Because the governor is concerned about crime and disorder in New York City and for her own election, she may actually get away a little bit more on the fiscal stuff. But if it appears she is letting him let the city go to seed on crime and disorder, that will hurt her in a statewide race as well.
- [46:12]
A
Yeah. I mean, especially now that she's endorsed him. Right. I mean, it may not have hurt her had she withheld her endorsement because then she could have blamed him.
- [46:19]
C
Yeah. Things like the police backing up the mental health officers in the subways. I mean, that's made a big difference. He wants to stop doing that. It's explicitly in his plan. And the co response teams does not.
- [46:35]
A
Allow that because the co response team's thing, I mean, it really kills me because this is a proposal that he just hammers every chance that he gets and. And there is absolutely nothing behind it. He continues. And this is one of the things that I appreciated about SLIWA is he continues to cite this program called Cahoots in Eugene, Oregon. Okay. First off, Eugene, Oregon and New York City, very, very different places. I think SLE was right to point that out. But if you actually look into the Cahoots program, they answer 17% of the calls that they could possibly answer for mental health. 75% of of them are like the lowest risk kinds of interactions. It's like giving a homeless person a ride to a shelter or just doing a welfare check. Okay. And Even then in one, in every 67 calls that they respond to. They still call for police backup. And then there's some other subset of calls where police are already on the scene when they get there. Combine that with the fact that there's actually research. I mean, Zorra Mandani said yesterday that he trusts dispatchers to be able to. Able to distinguish between calls that require police and calls. Well, there's actually been a really good study done on this in Philadelphia. And you know what? The dispatchers there, who have a lot more bandwidth than dispatchers here, still got 20% of those wrong. Meaning that there was, you know, activity masquerading as some. That requires a police response that ultimately didn't. Or vice versa. You know, activity masquerading as, you know, an incident that didn't require police response and then ultimately did. This is not easy. Easy. Okay.
- [48:08]
B
Any One of those 20% could wind up on the front page of the New York Post.
- [48:12]
A
That's exactly right. And then on top of that, it's like, you want to expand this to answer 200,000 mental health calls a year? Where are you going to find that workforce? I mean, like, who told him that there is a ready stable of qualified mental health professionals that are going to work for a municipal salary and answer calls 24 hours a day, seven days, day A. A week to get vomited on and, you know, deal with, you know, crazy homeless people for 67, $80,000 a year, if that.
- [48:44]
C
It's been a impediment to both the city and the MTA programs. It's hard to find a nurse.
- [48:52]
A
That's right.
- [48:52]
C
Who wants to wander the subway all night. I mean, you can. The people who do it, they do it because they really believe in it.
- [48:59]
A
Or they don't have a lot of.
- [49:00]
C
Jobs for nurses out there that are not cushy jobs, but they're cushier than doing this. That's a constraint. And that you can't. I think he says he wants a hundred subway stations immediately that are only clinicians. Take away the police. If you did this right, ironically, you would need a bigger police force, not a smaller one, because you need more officers to back them up. But it would still take a long time. You cannot switch out to police for clinicians and continue to see crime falling, even modestly.
- [49:33]
A
That's exactly right.
- [49:34]
B
To my ear. He really wants a new order of nuns.
- [49:37]
A
Yeah, yeah. For that case. It's wild. I mean, it really is. Anyway. Well, I appreciate the conversation, as always.
- [49:46]
C
Yeah. This was fun.
- [49:47]
A
It was. It was. And for those of you watching. I hope you enjoyed it as much as we all did. Please do not forget like comment, subscribe, ring the bell, ask us questions, do all the things that help boost the podcast and the algorithm. I hope you enjoyed it. Until next time, you have been listening to the City Journal podcast and we will see you again soon.