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- [00:00]
A
Welcome to a special edition of Max Politics. This is Ben Max from Gotham Gazette. Happy to be joined by Katherine Garcia, Democratic candidate for New York City mayor. How are you?
- [00:10]
B
I'm doing great. Hopefully you enjoyed the day.
- [00:12]
A
It's a beautiful day. We've got a. That's a bonus for the campaign. We've had. We had a couple beautiful days right after. Right, right after primary day.
- [00:23]
B
Had some beautiful days.
- [00:25]
A
Have you had a couple open today? What's that?
- [00:28]
B
Pool's open today.
- [00:29]
A
Yeah, yeah. Here we go. Now the summer's arriving just in time. So how are you feeling about where things stand? Obviously you gave remarks on primary night to outline some of that. A couple days later to digest things, you know. How are you feeling about how you performed in this race? To what we know so far. Again, cautioning everyone, we don't know anything final and we've got a tally of in person votes. But how are you feeling about what we've seen here?
- [00:59]
B
Oh, I feel incredibly positive about where we are. There's a tremendous number of absentee votes out there. We've received 100,000 already. 200,000 were requested that could come in over the next week. So there is still a lot of votes to be counted and they're coming from districts that I was really strong with.
- [01:21]
A
Right. Your campaign put out an analysis that there's sort of a disproportionate number of absentees that were requested from districts where you did well. So you have a pretty sizable gap to try to make up. Eric Adams has a pretty sizable lead and Maya Wiley is in between the two of you as of now. But the general sense in your campaign is you feel like with the absentees, where we'd see the first choice votes of those absentees first, that that will help boost you initially. And then what do you think about the ranked choice voting instant runoff that will unfold? What is your sense of that?
- [02:00]
B
So what we saw going into these final days was that my favorables were higher than anyone else's. And favorables in a ranked choice situation are incredibly helpful. Means that I was popular among everybody. I get everybody seconds. And that means that we are on the pathway to victory.
- [02:22]
A
When you look at the candidates who will be eliminated in the runoff first, there's obviously sort of the furthest down ballot candidates in terms of the initial results. And then you get into the top tier of the eight that have been at the debates and such and we'll see that batch of Sean Donovan, Ray Maguire, Diane Morales, all being eliminated. As this count goes, do you feel, you feel like on those voters, ballots who chose them first, that you're in contention for a lot of those second place votes.
- [02:53]
B
Oh, absolutely. And also Scott stringer and Ray McGuire and Sean Donovan. Those are all Catherine number twos.
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A
You think so? Okay. And then as it goes, if it goes in that same order, we get to Andrew Yang. And that was a very clear strategy. Where you were out on the campaign trail, he was telling his voters to please rank you number two. You were meeting with a lot of his supporters and in stronghold neighborhoods of his. What is your general sense about whether that message got through? Do you think that a very high percentage of his voters will have you number two? Or are you worried that that's not going to quite pan out like, you know, it might appear to based on those public appearances?
- [03:38]
B
Oh, so, you know, we're incredibly positive about where that ends up. Obviously we don't know how people voted, but we are incredibly positive.
- [03:48]
A
And in terms of where you did well in this tally of the first place votes and the in person votes speak a little bit about what you see as your sort of strongholds in the city, how you looked at the map and what, what that told you about how you perform with voters.
- [04:08]
C
Oh, we clearly had some significant numbers and we ran up the board in some areas. But I think when you get to the twos and threes, you're gonna find that we were strong citywide because we campaign citywide.
- [04:21]
A
And what there's this interesting pattern in the first place votes though, of you got a lot of first place votes in kind of brownstone Brooklyn, your neck of the woods
- [04:34]
C
here for 51 years. If I didn't actually look at the numbers and Brooklyn, there'd be a real problem.
- [04:40]
A
Yes, well, you pulled out a lot of your home base there and then you did really well in a lot of parts of Manhattan. And then we see these very interesting other parts of the other boroughs where you. Again, this is all just the in person, first ranked boats, but up in Riverdale, in the Bronx, parts of Staten island, other parts of Queens, some, some in sort of southern Brooklyn. What is, are there things about those neighborhoods that tell you, you know, there's reasons that you did particularly well there?
- [05:13]
B
I think the message about understanding people's day to day lives, they want their kids to go to school, please get out of my small business way, please keep us safe and you know, keep the streets clean. And in some of those areas there are also high pockets of civil servants and people who work for the city. So they know Me, they know what I can do, and they trust me to run the government.
- [05:41]
A
I wanted to ask you about that. You got, obviously, some labor union endorsements in the race, especially the labor unions that you work closely with at sanitation. A lot of the other unions went to other candidates. But did you get a sense that a lot of the members of those unions were going to wind up being your voters?
- [05:59]
B
No, I did.
- [06:01]
A
Any particular ones.
- [06:03]
B
So it was more around the fact that when people talk to sanitation workers, everyone's like, I did a poll of the sanitation workers, and they really like you. So now I like you. And how did you do that? They're all men. I mean, they're not all men. We do have the former miss Staten island sanitation worker, but, you know, how did you do that? And it's talking to people and listening.
- [06:30]
A
And are there any particular unions where you think you're, you know, the membership was strongest, you know, behind you?
- [06:38]
B
I mean, besides the Teamsters, who are clearly behind me. You know, I think I was pulling through the teachers union. I mean, my sister's a teacher. I think I was pulling from people from DC 37 who know me through the food program. So I think we had a lot of people out there who actually were supportive, even if their union was not.
- [07:01]
A
And so one of the other patterns with these neighborhoods is you perform best in neighborhoods that are whiter. Other candidates perform best. Again, first place votes in person in communities of color. Do you think you had an issue breaking through in communities of color in this race?
- [07:18]
B
I think when we look at the twos and threes, we're going to see that we were strong across the board.
- [07:25]
A
All right, any particular places you think you'll be strongest in those twos and threes?
- [07:30]
B
Oh, I think we'll be strong in central Brooklyn and particularly southeast Queens. It's like where. Where you've got folks who are, like, homeowners, really want you to pay attention to the basics. We think will be very strong there.
- [07:44]
A
So it sounds like you think you'll be strongest number two in where Andrew Yang did well. Of course, some of. Where Scott Stringer did well. Maybe some of my. Where Maya Wiley did well. But if you do, if you're doing very well in places that, as a number two, where Eric Adams did well.
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C
That doesn't help.
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A
That doesn't help, exactly. Yes. That's what I was getting at.
- [08:06]
C
Right.
- [08:06]
A
I mean, most. Most likely, if you're going to win, you need to make sure you leapfrog Maya Wiley, and then it's you and Eric Adams, right. In the final round. So potentially, obviously, there's some other things that would have to come into play to get you there. But potentially, what you really need to win this race is to leapfrog Maya Wiley through those twos and threes and then to have her voters have chosen you second. And do you. Did you get a sense that there's a chance there, and did you miss an opportunity to work with her like you worked with Andrew Yang?
- [08:38]
C
We think we will be strong after we leapfrogged Maya with her twos. I mean, like, she.
- [08:43]
B
Both of us. Her twos are my twos. My twos are her twos. That's what we saw consistently through this. And we were very open to working with whoever wanted to work with us, whether or not that was Andrew yang or Ray McGuire or Maya Wiley. We were open to it all because we thought that's what Ranked Choice was about, that you could run really positive campaign messages.
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A
But nothing panned out with Maya Wiley.
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B
It just didn't happen.
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A
How much blowback did you get to the Andrew Yang alliance? We obviously saw some stuff on social media. We saw. There was one video. Again, one video. I never like to make too big a deal out of any one example, but that's why I'm asking you if you got a broader sense. Were there voters, a significant number of voters in your mind who pushed back on your campaigning with him? Was there any sizable blowback to that that you felt?
- [09:37]
B
Not. Not really. There are people. I mean, and this is part of adjusting to Ranked Choice, where people work together. There were people who spread. But aren't you all supposed to be opposed to each other? And I was like, on Ranked Choice, you don't have to. You can actually work together. And I think it helps get turnout up, which I'm thrilled about. We look to be much higher in turnout than 2013, and it allows you to be more positive. Like, Andrew and I don't get along on most topics. Get along on some.
- [10:07]
A
Yeah, you mostly. Speaking of that, you mostly stayed above the fray in this race. You had a few sharp comments here and there. But even when you were juxtaposing yourself to other candidates, you mostly didn't do it in a personal way and didn't do it in a particularly negative way. You just sort of juxtapose your experience. Even when it was with Eric Adams. You said borough president office is, you know, you're managing 100 people. That's. That's nothing like running the sanitation department or, you know, some of the other Things that I've done in city government. Talk about that as a strategy and how you think it. It worked for you.
- [10:44]
C
Well, it's both a strategy, but it's
- [10:46]
B
also about being authentic. I am not. I don't want to have a fight. I don't need to have a fight on. Like, I will be a mama bear if I need to be a mama Bear, but just to do it for political purposes, to do a hit job that I don't like. And it's also, I don't think it's what the voters like. And I always go back to, I'm a voter. What do I want to hear? And I don't want to hear people fighting. I want you to tell me what you're going to do to fix it.
- [11:17]
C
Yeah.
- [11:18]
A
And you sidestep some of the times where some of that came in your direction. Was that hard to do? Was it hard to sort of take the higher road when. When Eric Adams, even at times, Andrew Yang, before that, before you sort of came back together on the campaign trail, he was starting to throw some. Some elbows your way. Was it hard?
- [11:40]
B
Actually, to be quite honest with you, no. I mean, try doing a snow day and elbows from everybody. That 8.4 million elbows coming at me. So not really. It's. It's to be expected. But I'm not a politician, and I learned that they like to do mudsling. I just don't think that it helps. I don't think it helps the voters understand the differences between the candidates. I don't think it helps really push your message about what you want to take, where you're taking the city.
- [12:13]
A
Have you been frustrated at all about the conversation since Tuesday night? Have you been. Have you been frustrated with the way that Eric Adams has all talked at all, talked about where he stands and, you know, he's bumping right up against that line of declaring victory, but he hasn't. But have you been frustrated at all with either things he said or other things that you've heard out there?
- [12:38]
B
No, no. I, you know, he can try and count the chickens before they're hatched, but, like, I'm certainly not going to. And you're at 30%. You still got 20% to go. Like, that's a lot of votes that have to come through for you. So I am certainly not counting my eggs before they hatch, and I'm not frustrated. I went to fifth grade graduation yesterday, and it was lovely.
- [13:05]
A
And when you've talked about your campaign here and sort of defying expectations as we await the absentee count, which we won't have for another several days and then weeks before we have the official ranked choice voting runoff. Even though we're going to get some sort of strange runoff of the in person votes next Tuesday, which I'm a little leery about because it might give people a wrong impression that we're going to have to deal with again in tempering people's expectations and urging patience. But as we await all of that and you sort of look back, what are a couple of things you point to as to why you think you were able to defy expectations, whether you wind up finishing in third, second, or first. What do you think?
- [13:51]
C
Oh, it was having an incredible discipline on the message of the campaign, being willing to put the time in to do the hard work of getting that message out of doing the fundraising that was required of. Oh, goodness gracious. How many forums on Zoom did I do? I would like there to be a common app for questionnaires.
- [14:14]
B
I think we wrote 400 pages of answers. But it was digging in and doing the work day in and day out that made this campaign successful. And I'm extremely proud of my team. Extremely proud of my team.
- [14:30]
A
Any moments you'd point to? Specific moments. Obviously, the Times endorsement has to be up there.
- [14:35]
B
Oh, absolutely. That was. So we're debate prepping and one of my teammates gets a text from her boyfriend and she just turns and shows me the COVID And I was like, are we still doing debate prep?
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A
I really can't believe that's how you learned about it.
- [14:52]
B
Oh, yes.
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A
You have missed a missed call or something that they tried to tell. They just publish it.
- [14:58]
B
They just publish it. And so, yes. No, there was no. I was like, are we still gonna have to do debate prep? Because I think we're all a little distracted at the moment. And so the answer was no.
- [15:11]
C
I had other things I had to
- [15:12]
B
do that was big. But Daily News was big. Liz Krueger was big. Danny o' Donnell was big. Neely in Queens was big. There were some key elected endorsements that were incredibly helpful as well as those two. And then League of Conservation Voters and Streets PAC and Planned Parent. Incredibly helpful.
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A
Were there conversations you had early in the campaign that, you know, people said to you, we'd love to get behind you, but we don't think you can win?
- [15:48]
B
Are you kidding me?
- [15:49]
A
No, I'm not done with the question. I know you had those. I know you had those, but are there some of those that you've revisited with those people and said you really missed out Here. You really should have come with me.
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B
No, they usually then just donated to the campaign. We didn't have to have a conversation.
- [16:07]
A
Okay. Okay. Anything you would have done differently, though, at this, you know, as you do, some reflection here, even before we know the final results, let's say, even if you win, are there things that you would do differently if you could do it again? Is there any, you know, any strategy, any idea you wish you had thrown out there? Anything, you know, anything you sort of left on the. On the cutting room floor that you wish you had done differently?
- [16:34]
C
The only thing I really wish is that we had been able to push faster out of the zoom world, because
- [16:40]
B
I felt much more comfortable once I could be talking to voters, and I felt zoom ended up being a real barrier to having a lot of those conversations. But, you know, we were still dealing with people getting sick. I mean, it was, like, extremely high risk of COVID every single moment. I do wish that we'd been able to get out there more, but I didn't want to risk my staff at all, and I didn't want anyone to get sick because, you know, I did that with sanitation. I watched people get very, very sick at the beginning of the pandemic.
- [17:19]
A
You have. I interviewed yesterday on my radio show and for this podcast, Mara Gay of the New York Times editorial board. And we talked a bit how that endorsement clearly was a very big boost to you and Brad Lander in the comptroller race and Alvin Bragg in the DA race. And it seems like the Times editorial board had a very impactful cycle here. But one thing she said was that your message and your track record of management and experience really appealed to them. But generally, your policies were maybe not quite as progressive as they. As they are as a board and as they. As she thought at least that, you know, maybe some of the city is. How have you navigated that? Because that's a lot of pushback that I've heard, you know, people on the left sort of saying is, you know, Katherine Garcia really wants to manage city government better, but also is more conservative than we'd like.
- [18:19]
C
Goodness.
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B
I would say that some of the most progressive policies that passed in the last administration were ones that I did. If you want to talk about environmental justice, commercial waste zones is 18 million truck miles taken off the street. If you want to talk about waste equity, I'm actually doing the work. I'm not hashtagging the work. I know that Mara is further left than I am, and I am assuming that she will hold my feet to the fire when I am in office.
- [18:52]
A
And two of the areas, though, that people. And again, you clearly tapped into a lot in the electorate. And Eric Adams, who has taken fairly moderate stances on some of these same issues, whether it's policing or education, and others clearly appealed to a lot of the electorate. So this is not necessarily to say that this criticism from the left is really that indicative of any great percentage of New York voters. But I'm wondering, in terms of the coalition that you were trying to build, did you feel like you left any sort of votes on the table by not trying to appeal more to progressive voters?
- [19:38]
C
Oh, I don't think I left any votes on the table. I think they're all going to come through. And I think that those. I am incredibly practical. I want New York City to be an unbelievable place, but I really focus on families and kids and what makes it so that they can do better here. How do they economically thrive?
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B
How do they get the best education?
- [20:01]
C
And I don't actually find that moderate. Find that pretty progressive.
- [20:06]
A
Yeah, that's one interesting thing, people. I think there was a bit of surprise when you talked about raising the charter school cap. And. And there's definitely some, you know, there's some debate among. Among many people about what the actual progressive position on charter schools really is. Do you. Do you want to explain that a little bit more? I don't know that I've heard you, you know, explain where your stance on charter schools comes from, what experience or what advice or who you've talked to or how that was informed.
- [20:34]
C
You know, I want to make New York City public schools like the crown jewels that they should be. I'm a product. I know they can be great.
- [20:42]
B
I graduated from them. But they're not all great right now. And charter schools give kids an option. And I care about that first grader who's starting school who does not have time for me to fix it, or the kid who's got autism. And there's a great program in Manhattan that wants to open new programs in the other boroughs for kids with autism. And so my lens that I was looking at it through was, what do the kids need right now and how do we get it to them? But I am all about making sure that New York City public schools are phenomenal and investing goodness. I actually had no idea that there are literally schools in the city of New York that do not have libraries. How is that possible? How is it possible that we have schools without a library and that we need to make investments in art and music? And sports and theater in all of our schools. So that they do well that you don't think about it.
- [21:42]
C
I mean, the whole.
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B
The surprising thing for me as a parent was the whole G and T question, because I didn't ever even think about sending my kids to a G and T school because there was a decent elementary school up the block. I just didn't worry about it. I was like, oh, yeah, that's where they go. They go up the block. Everyone should have that feeling.
- [22:04]
A
And in our last couple of minutes here, just a couple. Couple more questions, did you. What were some of the biggest lessons you learned here in this campaign about becoming a politician? You might still not call yourself a politician, but I'm sorry, you've run for mayor now, so you're something of a politician.
- [22:24]
C
I did not realize the amount of political favors that were gonna be at play.
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B
Cause I didn't have any.
- [22:32]
C
I'd spent my life, I think, probably saying more no's than yeses to people because that was just the nature of my job. That there were so much political favors that were going on. That was surprising, the amount of questionnaires and specific one issue groups that we had to figure out what my position was on. Should elephants be free? Yes.
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B
Okay. Yes, elephants should be free. You know, that was surprising. But other than that, you know, fundraising was, you know, it's weird to ask people for money. I had never done that when.
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A
You haven't done that before, right?
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C
Yeah. Oh, no, I'd never done that before. And I'd been taught most of my life to never talk about money. You should never talk about money or ask anyone for money.
- [23:21]
A
Speaking of money, though, this is a little. You know, we just reported on this in the context of the results, and there's more filings out now, but you were drastically outspent by Eric Adams, and both you and Maya Wiley were. Especially when you factor in the outside group supporting him. And again, there's others, too, but they've all been eliminated. How much of a factor do you think that was in the race? Do you think that the several million dollars more that were spent in support of him made a difference or not?
- [23:56]
B
Oh, I mean, money isn't the whole
- [23:58]
C
driver, but it does matter. I mean, I wish it didn't. I really wish it didn't, but it does matter. And it gave him some extra running room that I just didn't have.
- [24:12]
B
I'm thankful for the campaign finance board and the matching fund that made this campaign possible. But we ran very tight through most of this. Because we were not. I'm not rich. I don't have money and neither does my dad. It was not gonna. And I don't apparently have any rich friends. So we ran tight.
- [24:40]
A
And how much were you a pseudo campaign manager as the candidate, as someone who managed. Your pitch is management, right? Your pitches, management, running government, knowing government, being that type of hands on person. How much did you do that with your campaign?
- [24:56]
C
Oh, no, I really empowered my campaign. My job was very specific as a
- [25:02]
B
candidate and I was responsible for getting the message out there, being in touch with the strategy and doing the fundraising. And that was. That was my particular job.
- [25:17]
A
Yeah, you have to do the fundraising.
- [25:18]
C
Right.
- [25:21]
B
It's fascinating. It actually works. When you call people, I'm like, shockingly, they will actually give you money if you tell them why. But I empowered my campaign manager. She was phenomenal. I had a great team around me.
- [25:41]
A
And was there anything that they told you to do that you said no to?
- [25:48]
B
There's nothing that they told me to do that I said no to. But there have been some moments on the trail where they're like I was a little bit in front of them and kept my communications team hopping.
- [26:02]
C
Okay.
- [26:04]
A
All right. I think I could keep asking you questions all day, but we'll catch up another time. If it's not going to be you, it's going to be either Eric Adams or Maya Wiley. Do you have a preference who you'd rather see it be if it's not going to be you?
- [26:18]
C
As I said, I'm not giving away my ballot.
- [26:21]
A
Well, I don't know, Maybe neither of them was on your ballot, but you have to have a preference. Are you now hooked on politics? Is this, you know, again, there's a lot of votes to be counted, but if this doesn't go your way, is this something where you're now in and you're going to say, hear all the other ideas people have for me in politics or what would you want to do if it doesn't work out?
- [26:45]
C
Oh, I'm going to try and be in this to win it until final day and then we'll figure out what I'm going to do next.
- [26:52]
A
I know, I hesitate. I hesitate to ask the question. There's a lot of votes still to be counted. But just in case you had an interesting thought, I got to throw it out there. All right, Katherine Garcia, we'll catch up with you again soon. Thanks for taking the time.
- [27:05]
C
Absolutely. Talk soon.
- [27:06]
A
All right.