Transcript for:
NYC Mayoral Debate Highlights

good evening welcome to the final Democratic primary debate in the race for mayor of New York City i'm Errol Lewis political anchor for Spectrum News New York 1 and we're coming to you from the Gerald W lynch Theater at John J college of Criminal Justice located on the west side of Manhattan i'm joined by Brian Lair of WNYC Gothamist and Katie Honen of the news organization The City the candidates have been making their pitches to New Yorkers for months now and we are only hours away from the start of early voting across the five burrows starting on Saturday over the next two hours you're going to hear from the seven leading Democratic candidates on their proposals on issues directly affecting the lives of New Yorkers a reminder that the mayoral is currently held by Eric Adams who has withdrawn from the Democratic primary and is running in the November general election as an independent candidate tonight's debate is brought to you by the New York City campaign finance board the city agency that administers the public matching funds program it's also sponsored by Spectrum News New York 1 WNYC Gothamist and the city and Spectrum Noticius and our co-sponsors are John J college of Criminal Justice the Craig Numar Graduate School of Journalism at CUNI the Center for New York City and State Law at New York Law School and the Museum of the City of New York and you can watch tonight's debate without a payw wall on NY1.com it's also being broadcast on NYCTV WNYC radio the Spectrum News YouTube page and C-SPAN and in Spanish on Spectrum Noticius and YouTube the candidates joining us tonight have met a polling or a fundraising threshold established by the campaign finance board in order to take part in the debate in alphabetical order adrien Adams is the city council speaker representing parts of southeast Queens andrew Cuomo previously served as governor of the state of New York brad Lander is the New York City controller zoran Mandani is a state assembly member representing parts of Queens zelnor Mery is a state senator representing parts of Brooklyn scott Stringer is a former city controller and Manhattan burough president and Whitney Tilson is a former hedge fund manager who helped create Teach for America now for the rules the rules that you see on your screen right now have been agreed to by all of the candidates each candidate will deliver an opening statement of up to 45 seconds answers to our questions will generally be limited to 60 seconds with a chance for rebuttals at the discretion of the moderator and candidates will have an opportunity to ask one opponent one question during our cross-examination round we're going to begin with opening statements the order was determined by a random drawing this morning and so we'll begin with Scott Stringer good evening well good evening look I love New York City i was born and raised here and I believe the future of this city can be limitless but let's face it people are feeling that it's getting tougher to live here people who built our neighborhoods are leaving the city young people who want to lay down roots here do not see enough opportunity i say enough is enough we need a mayor who has experience we need a mayor who has competence and a mayor who has a vision to build affordable housing to enact universal child care to build a public school system so that kids can thrive i've seen the best of this city in every neighborhood as controller as a burough president as a state legislator and I know that right now at this moment we need somebody who has the ability to make sure this city can rise again and I'm going to do it okay next is Elnor Myri this morning I was on Flatbush Avenue getting my haircut so I could be fresh for this debate and one of my constituents walked in and didn't talk to me about politics she said "What are you going to do to fight for immigrants like me and my husband?" I got on the train as I left and I ran into a mother who said "What are you going to do to fight to help make our schools world class?" So here's the thing you're going to hear a lot of promises a lot of nice and cute things on the stage tonight but when you put your head to the pillow you want a mayor that is going to fight to keep your family safe fight to keep that roof over your head and fight to give you opportunity i know that because that's what I think about every single day and I'm ready to put the gloves on as the next mayor to fight to make that a reality thank you next candidate is Whitney Tilson good evening i'm Whitney Tilson and I'm not a politician i'm a businessman and philanthropist and uh I entered this race because I love this city but right now it's a mess it's not talent that we lack we've got the best and brightest nor money we spend double that of any other city in the world it's leadership and we can't afford amateur hour in city hall anymore it is rightly said that being job of mayor of this complex enormous city is the second hardest job in the world that's why we need a mayor who's experienced competent and can get things done not a social media phenom with cute videos someone who can balance the budget and make tough choices not pie in the sky promises that there's no realistic plan to pay for and someone who will keep us safe by ending chaos not inciting it by supporting law enforcement and by not threatening to defund and dismantle our police i will be that mayor and so I'm asking for your vote thank you okay our next candidate is Adrienne Adams thank you very much my name is Adrienne Adams and I'm running for mayor because I'm an everyday New Yorker just like all of you are when I open my front door I see what every New Yorker sees and that is we are in need of a change i raised four children in Southeast Queens in the same home that we live in i buy my own groceries so I know the costs of groceries for everyday New Yorkers look as the leader of the city council leading the most diverse city council in the history led by women majority I realize what leadership truly is i'm already doing the job i have successfully negotiated three city budgets i'm now in the middle of negotiating my fourth city budget i continue to lead and step in where our current mayor has not where we have fought through the city council budget cuts we have saved public libraries and prek i'm Adrienne Adams already doing the job asking you to rank me number one to be the first woman mayor of the city of New York next candidate is Brad Lander if you watched last week's debate you already know I'm not the flashiest candidate in this race i don't have a famous father i'm not the best at Tik Tok my daughter's here all her videos do better than mine but I love this city i believe in its future and I know how to make government work better as controller I've saved taxpayers over $2 billion canceled corrupt contracts managed the pension funds to record highs i've built or saved over 50,000 affordable homes as mayor I'll deliver 500,000 more that's why today the New York Times opinion panel said "I'm the best choice for mayor i've got the public integrity that New Yorkers deserve the progressive values that New Yorkers share and the management chops to deliver on them next is Oran Mandani my name is Assembly Member Zan Mani and I am running to make the city affordable i'll freeze the rent for millions of tenants make buses fast and free and deliver universal child care and before you ask I'll pay for it by taxing the rich the same billionaires who put Donald Trump back in the White House the same ones who are funding Andrew Cuomo's campaign like many New Yorkers I wasn't born in this country but I grew up in this city and it's one that we're in danger of losing we're under attack from authoritarianism from the outside and an affordability crisis from the inside yet if you turned on your television 20 years ago you'd have heard the same tired failed policies you'll hear from politicians tonight it's time for a new generation of leadership and that's exactly what my campaign is building a movement of more than 36,000 volunteers who have knocked on nearly a million doors and left us just two points away from city hall so join us and let's win a New York you can afford next is Andrew Cuomo good good evening uh and thank you all very much for having me here today i do have a very famous parent who I'm very proud of Matilda Cuomo and I hope she's watching uh everyone has a plan as you've heard everyone always has a plan uh that's always the way but the question for tonight is who has the ability to get the job done that's really the question who can build housing i built housing across the nation as HUD secretary i built LaGuardia Airport Kashusco Bridge Second Avenue Subway and more who can do public safety while my colleagues were defunding the police I was adding more police uh who can manage the city i manage the state that has double the budget of New York City and who can take on Donald Trump that is the big question and he sent troops into cities all across this country but he never sent them into New York when I was there and he never will when I am mayor a job looks easy when you haven't done it experience matters i will get the job done i will work for for you 247 thank you for your opening statements candidates mr cuomo many New Yorkers are concerned about what's happening in Los Angeles workplace immigration raids and deportations protests with some violence the president's deployment of the National Guard and the Marines over the objection of the governor and the mayor the Trump aid Steven Miller said the mayor has no say if you were mayor of New York right now how would you handle this situation if something like that happened here yeah um we had this situation before right this is not a case of first impression uh President Trump did this and Trump won he did it a number of times he sent troops into cities all across the country this is him being macho authoritarianism he's the commander-in-chief he never sent them into New York because I said to him "You better never send troops into New York we don't need them it would be a hostile act it would be a problem right now in this situation we're going to protect our immigrants this is a sanctuary city and we are going to defend the laws of the sanctuary city we have an NYPD that is the largest police force in the United States of America donald Trump only picks fights that he can win he cannot win a fight with me as mayor of New York mr mani any contrast so far you know what is so troubling to see right now is we also have the NYPD assisting ICE in some of those very missions right here in New York City we saw the strategic response group arrest a pastor who is peacefully observing the arrest of a migrant at Federal Plaza when I am the mayor the NYPD will serve public safety of New Yorkers they will not assist Trump's ICE agents and furthermore though Donald Trump may not believe in the law we have to be clear that we do and we will in fact bring back our law department to its prepandemic staffing levels 200 additional lawyers and start to provide lawyers for immigrants who are in deportation cases because we know that by doing so we in fact increase their likelihood of coming home to their families in New York City by 11 times finally we can see examples in previous mayoral administrations where the mayor's team like Steve Banks in the last administration took every single step they could to ensure that none of the personal information the city had would be turned over to the Trump administration I would follow that example through all of our agencies thank you um Ms adam Miss Adam staying on this topic but with kind of a a followup if the president sees what he thinks is disorder in the streets and believes that local and state law enforcement officials are not doing a good job at protecting citizens and property why shouldn't he step in his supporters say that's his responsibility we are right now dealing with a lawless president enacting lawless behavior across this entire nation as one who continued to speak up and out against Donald Trump currently uh Donald Trump would like to bring ICE back onto Riker's Island which has been illegal since the year 2014 through an executive order put forth by the deputy mayor of the city of New York not the mayor of the city of New York which is unprecedented they want to bring ICE back onto Riker's Island and the person that is endorsing me she is the baddest AG in the nation her name is Tish James she said,"Adrien if Donald Trump starts to get in your way sue him." So I am suing him i am suing the mayoral administration and Donald Trump's ICE we will continue to protect immigrants when I am mayor just like I am protecting them as the leader of the city council we will make sure that Donald Trump's ICE obeys the law we are a sanctuary city i am here to protect that in the city council and when I am mayor I will continue to protect our laws and our immigrants mr lander continuing on the same track but if the president says the mayor has no say which seems to be the case because he did deploy the Marines and the National Guard what would you do what could you do let me tell you about how the mayor could have a say last Thursday and again this morning I went down to the federal building to observe immigration court and then accompany immigrants out past ICE agents so they could get out of the federal building and back to their families one was a couple with kids in our city school system they were worried they weren't going to see them again so I stand up to bullies that don't back down from a fight and I will make clear that we're going to protect the 40% of New Yorkers who are immigrants and we're going to keep them safe and we're going to keep New York City safe you can deescalate conflict what Trump wants is to strike fear and escalate conflict we're going to make clear we stand up for immigrant New Yorkers and we deescalate and keep the peace i do want to tell you though about some immigrant New Yorkers that Andrew Cuomo screwed when he was governor and we're defending in my office a couple of hundred immigrant subway cleaners who he made clean the subway cars but cheated out of the prevailing wages and health care that they were due we're fighting right now to get it back i stand up to bullies and I'll stand up to Donald Trump mr cuomo you were you were named so we we may not be able to do this every time all night but you were named so you get a brief response i Yeah um I don't know what Mr lander is talking about the MTA contracted for cleaning services i assume that's what he's talking about uh the MTA goes through a rigorous contracting process they should never have hired illegal immigrants if it is true uh but obviously I obviously I had nothing to do with them hiring what you said what did you call them if anyone was undocumented or they didn't pay the proper wages I had nothing to do with it it would have been You didn't pay them the proper wages you cheated them out of the prevailing wages they were due and the healthcare they were due i didn't contract with them at all the MTA contract who appoints the chair of the MTA oh I see so every contract that the MTA contracts you want me to be held responsible this one yes because immigrant workers got cheated out of $2.5 million and their healthcare and the orders came from on high yeah so you say if they did it that would obviously be wrong the MTA contracts for $6 billion per year they have multiple contracts we have a controller on the state of New York who audits the books i'm sure he's almost as good as you and if that happened he would have found out thankfully these are prevailing wage workers under city contracts but um still on President Trump and Mr stringer you can reply to that if you want but my moving on question is his administration has made deep cuts to some programs that directly fund services for New Yorkers a listener to my radio show asks "How do you propose addressing funding shortfalls for critical services or which programs will you prioritize above others assuming you can't make for all the funding gaps make up for all the funding gaps?" And uh please tell everybody how you think your approach would be better than the other candidates sure sure Brian well look I was in Trump one when I was a city controller and during that time period I didn't let him get this city down during my time I managed to divest $4 billion from fossil fuels controller i dvested from gun manufacturers i divested from private prisons i put the line in the sand with that guy and I will do the same as mayor look when you grow up in Washington Heights everything comes your way and you understand the only way to deal as a bully is to draw the line early and fight back so here's specifically what I'm going to do first as mayor we're going to establish a very very rainy day fund we need to get $500 million from the state and $500 million from the city so that we can continue to replenish the money that Donald Trump is taking from us $80 million is taken in the dead of night we need to keep the social safety net alive until Hakee Jeff becomes the speaker and we can dismantle the Trump organization just one two seconds just to straighten out the two of them i was the one who brought the prevailing case with the MTA on those workers and I believe very strongly then that we have to make sure that we pay wages so people can live and stay in New York and that's why I did it mr my same Mr my same question about dealing with the defunding of the city uh yeah first let me put my lawyer hat on for a second what Donald Trump is doing right now is flatout unconstitutional and we got to say that very clearly because they are counting on the chaos being normal they're counting on us being relaxed about this approach because we see it in the headlines every day it is flatout unconstitutional and we should not as a city hesitate whatsoever to bring it to him when he's coming after our folks in this city so look I want to hire 50 more lawyers to our law department so we can go on the offensive and the best way for us to be independent of the Trump cuts is to expand our tax base that is why I want to deliver a million homes over the next 10 years it's why I want to extend preK and 3K to 6 p.m it is why I want universal after school for everyone this has to be a city where you can raise a family where people can make the choice to stay here when they can spend their money in our local economy we can create $18 billion over the next 10 years if we create 1 million homes over the next decade that is what I plan to do and I plan to go on offense every single time this bully comes after my city mr mr tilson uh Mr chelsea you'll get the last word on this um people are talking about standing up to President Trump can it ever be smart in your opinion to hold your tongue about your worst opinions of him so that New York could possibly get better treatment or would that not be effective uh yes possibly um we there's a grim anniversary coming up on Tuesday it is the 10-year anniversary of Trump coming down that escalator uh spewing hatred and xenophobia and I have been fighting him tooth and nail every day of those 10 years uh that said um he is a childish bully and uh getting into a Twitter war with him uh needlessly uh would hurt our city thing uh he tweets a lot of crazy stuff and uh most of the time if you simply ignore it he uh moves on to his uh his next childish uh foolishness so uh to your question uh I will fight Donald Trump uh as mayor stand up to him sue him if necessary uh but my job is to serve the people of New York and that sometimes involves uh not provoking uh a a childish person but one who unfortunately holds a lot of power and our 10% of our city budget is uh federal funding candidates thank you for this first round okay um candidates some of you have many years of government experience while others have spent less than a decade in office one of you has never been elected to any office so and then if we consider age one of you would be if elected the oldest person ever to be sworn in as mayor while another would be the youngest mayor to take office in more than 100 years so let me start with you Mr mom Donnie what do you say to critics who think that a 33-year-old assemblyman who's only been in office four years needs more experience before becoming mayor of the largest city in the country what I would ask is for them to judge me by the campaign that I am running a campaign we began with about two full-time employees polling at 1% that has now grown to be one where we manage over 36,000 volunteers that have knocked on nearly a million doors and ultimately what I will deliver to New York City is what I've been delivering in this race innovation and competence and I will do so by hiring the best and the brightest because for too long we've had an understanding of leadership where you simply want to replicate each one of your ideas and hire the people who will be quickest to say yes to whatever you say to them i will instead hire the people who have the track records the excellence the fluency and it has been a pleasure to meet with incredible officials like Maria Torres Springer like Patrick Gasbard like Steve Banks like Amit Ba so many who have delivered that public service and that public excellence in this city and that is what I would be doing as the next mayor of this city of New York mr uh similar question what would you say to New Yorkers concerned that your legislative record however lengthy is not the same as running an organization of 300,000 employees listen I think New Yorkers want a mayor that is going to deliver results for them and to do it when it is difficult to achieve i've passed over 60 bills that have become the law but when I ran for state senate back in 2018 Albany was dysfunctional some rogue Democrats propped up by Andrew Cuomo prevented so many legislation that would help everyday New Yorkers whether it was protection for tenants whether it was reproductive health whether it was climate legislation whether it was your right to be safe in your neighborhood and on day one in the state senate I passed something called early voting which all of us are going to participate in on this Saturday so I am about the results and about the work i have built coalition i have listened to stakeholders i've done really difficult things that is the job of the mayor to get everyone at the table and to achieve something that people said was impossible i've been in the business of delivering for the people of my district i look forward to doing the same thing for the people of New York City okay mr uh Cuomo if elected you would be the oldest person ever sworn in as mayor um if you serve two full terms you'd be 76 years old upon leaving office is somebody in their 70s the ideal age for holding the second hardest job in America let's do let's do one term at a time if we can uh I think you rais a very important point experience matters and I think inexperience is dangerous in this case mr mandami has had a staff of five people you're now going to run a staff of 300,000 employees he's never dealt with the city council he's never dealt with the Congress he's never dealt with the state legislature he's never negotiated with a union he's never built anything uh he's never dealt with a natural emergency he's never dealt with a hurricane with a flood etc he's never done any of the essentials and now you have Donald Trump on top of all of that and he's never dealt with what I think is the greatest national threat that we face uh in this president to put a person in this seat at that t at this time with no experience is reckless and dangerous uh to Mr lander and his experience remember this was the fiscal watchdog under the Eric Adams administration which was like the bookkeeper at Tam Hall [Applause] mr mandani to Mr cuomo I have never had to resign in disgrace i have never cut Medicaid i have never stolen hundreds of millions of dollars from the MTA i have neverounded the 13 women who credibly accused me of sexual harassment i have never sued for their gynecological records and I have never done those things because I am not you Mr cuomo and furthermore the name is Mam Dani m A M D A N I you should learn how to say it because we got to get it right yeah m may I respond my response or is this my 60 seconds on the question let let Mr lander speak and then you can respond to both just to be clear is this my response to Andrew or is this my 60 seconds no this is your response if you choose uh thank you so I've gotten so many Eric Adams contracts canceled we can't keep track you tried to put a $432 million no bid crony contract uh and we audited it and we got it cancelled uh we have done it time and time again uh Andrew knows a lot about corruption that's part of the experience he had he created a corruption commission and then killed it as soon as it got too close to him but his senior aids had to resign in corruption disgrace and let's be clear he has experience but leadership is not inviting 25-year-old young women into your office as he admitted he did and then asking them about their intimate life and whether they would date older men i lead by building the best teams not through sexual harassment corruption and disgrace mr uh Mr mandami is right he's never done anything period this is a man who just say the name right mi This is a man who has done nothing he's accomplished nothing three bills are all he passed he is the worst attendance record in the New York State Assembly he has never held a real job he has zero accomplishments and now he thinks he's going to be ready to be mayor of the city of New York it is laughable it is laughable and it is dangerous the I want I want I want to look out into the crowd and look at Richard Chow who lost his brother to suicide because of the taxi driver debt crisis i went with Mr chow over many many months organizing to push this very city to finally reckon with its complicity in that and we won $450 million in debt relief and I want you to look at him and tell him that that's nothing okay let's um you pass let's move to Mr stringer yeah can I just cut right to chase and and tell what's really going on here so truth be told experience matters and Andrew Cuomo has experience i know that he does but vision matters and Mandami said it right right mandi mandani mandani almost there okay I'm getting there almost there but you have the vision and you have articulated it during the campaign the problem The problem is we need somebody who can do both and my experience and my vision when you combine it is the third lane to win this race and that's what we have to do very good very good we cannot look we cannot have a mayoral te on training wheels but we also have to have a mayor who's willing to go to town hall meetings to meet where the voters where they are and that hasn't happened with the experienced candidate now one last thing every job I've had state legislator I introduced rules of reform in the assembly and got it passed as Manhattan B president I actually built affordable housing i didn't do one or two resonings i did that as my life's work and made a difference as controller I built the best controllers's office that Brad Lander takes credit for and I'm proud of that okay fair enough um I I want to bring Miss Adams into the the conversation miss Adams your private sector experience involved finding and training corporate leaders um government however involves working with people who are independently elected maybe politically connected who cannot be bypassed cannot be fired how do you avoid uh falling into the trap of catering to vested interests at the expense possibly of the public interest well in the words of Scott Stringer let's just cut to the chase as the only candidate currently doing this work that everyone is aspiring to do as co-leader in city government and city hall already as one that has walked up those steps of city hall for almost 10 years as the one that is leading one of the largest legislative bodies in the entire country as one that has seen 120,000 units of affordable housing coming up in the city as one who has championed the largest victory for affordable housing in a generation as one that is already doing this work as one that has taken private skills from the private sector in management I have trained people that will make more money than I will ever make in a lifetime and bringing those skills with me into the public sector into the New York City Council now leading a a body of 50 council members as the one with the experience ready to go to work tomorrow because where I work is where everyone else on this spa on this stage aspires to work in city hall in Adrienne Adams New York okay i have a question for you Mr uh Tilson related to this discussion and you have frequently said on the campaign trail that quote career politicians have caused many of the city's problems or made them worse uh you said tonight in fact that this is no time for amateur hour explain why a lack of experience running a city agency would make you a better manager than some of your rivals here um I actually view not being a politician as a feature not a bug it is possible to hire uh people into administration of course who have uh the experience of running a big bureaucracy uh I would point to Mike Bloomberg as my inspiration when I decided to run for mayor he had never held elected office before i think he was one of our greatest mayors uh he steered us through the global financial crisis and I believe that having someone like him who I saw was independent of all the special interests who in a low turnout offseason primary like what we're having right now uh only 5% of New Yorkers in of our total population is probably going to be enough to win the primary u and effectively and uh certainly last time was enough to win uh the mayorality so I think we need a mayor who is independent of that inherently corrupting system who doesn't need the job who isn't angling for higher uh office and who brings a business background uh which I think is more relevant to managing one of the world's largest bureaucracies okay thank you candidates when New Yorkers are asked their top concerns one of the biggest issues is always affordability particularly the high cost of housing millions of New Yorkers in rent stabilized apartments are currently awaiting a final ruling from the rent guidelines board about how much they could pay more each month in rent but first we'll get to a crucial question about the production of housing we want you the candidates to address New Yorkers with your top proposal to ease the housing crunch and I'll start with you Mr we we know you've been vocal about a plan to build and preserve 1 million units of housing you mentioned it earlier is that a realistic possibility given the current dynamics in the city uh let me tell you what's real Katie people are leaving the city because they can't afford to stay here they can't afford the rent can't afford to own a home like me and my wife who were looking to put down roots in the same neighborhood we grew up in people are struggling and we've had leaders of the past that have put their solutions forward and things have only gotten worse so yes 1 million homes over the next 10 years because we can't keep nibbling around the edges that is the only way we're actually going to bring down the cost of housing and listen is it going to be challenging of course it's going to be challenging but anything worth anything is going to be hard to do we built the Empire State Building in 13 months and we did it 100 years ago come on already of course we can do a million homes i want to change our public land to be affordable housing i want to convert our industrial areas to residential we have commercial real estate space that is laying vacant that can be converted as well we have opportunities to revitalize Nicha we got to be bold in this moment but we need the leadership and the courage to get it done and that's what I'm going to do thank you mr stringer your housing model your housing plan is to model a highly successful plan from the 1950s you call it Mitchell Lama 2.0 it sounds ideal but how would you pay for this uh expansive plan okay this is where we just got to have an honest conversation i get a million i could easily say we could do 2.5 million given my experience it's all Put that aside for a second people need affordable housing now they need lowincome housing now the way we do it is we take the thousand vacant lots I audited as controller and we give that land back to the people to not for profofits to limited profit developers we don't ask the luxury developers to build the low end and affordable housing we need we get a generation of people to come in and build the tens of thousands of units of housing see it's not just about building housing the second question or the question that I care passionately about is who are we building housing for we got to build more housing two threebedroom apartments for families so that after the second kid they don't leave they stay here we need to do what we did with Mitchellama Housing a a housing stock that is the best uh practice in the world we got to build more of that housing integrated housing because the people who moved into those buildings you know what they did they didn't just exist in those apartments they built communities schools and daycare centers and this is a promise I can keep while I'm alive while I'm mayor and we'll see what happens going forward but let's do that immediately on day one when I'm mayor thank you Mr lander as mayor you declare a housing emergency which could help you build half a million homes including on city-owned golf courses how do you get the citywide support for this plan so the New York Times opinion panel today said I was the best choice for mayor because I combined clear and bold plans and a real track record of delivering that is especially true on housing in the neighborhood around the Gowanas Canal when I was council member I organized the community to support redevelopment more housing more affordable housing is going up there than anywhere else in the city and the community supporting it because it's coming with open space and affordable art studios as well as 3,000 genuinely affordable homes we're even fixing up the Nicha units nearby as controller i saved the 35,000 rentstabilized units that were put at risk when Signature Bank failed by investing to buy the mortgages on them i know how to do this i have a detailed plan for getting 500,000 units built uh that's around the Inter Burough Express where we've got new opportunities for transit oriented de development and we can build great new neighborhoods on four of the city's 12 golf courses because people will be excited about courtyards for families about daycare centers about new schools and libraries places they could own in neighborhoods they will love thank you okay um Mr cuomo you were HUD Secretary you were governor for more than a decade you managed a nonprofit housing organization what would you say to voters who wonder if all that experience might end up being in the end the wrong experience since after decades of work we've ended up in a housing emergency here in the city yeah i would say um Errol I would say look at look at the results right uh everyone has a plan i have a plan i have a plan everyone has a plan they had a plan to build airport nobody did it until I did it they had a plan to build a new Moahan train station but nobody could do it until I did it they had a plan to finish the Second Avenue subway but nobody could do it until I could do it now we have plans to build affordable housing and we do need hundreds of thousands of units of affordable housing there's no doubt but we're going to need a different model the city HPD does not work to create this volume the state housing program does not work to create this volume we're going to have to accelerate the ULERP program and then we're going to have to open every option available nicha units office to residential conversion every city-owned piece of property we have to look at air rights how do we maximize it we are going to have to have a fullon uh assault to build affordable housing and yes it's one thing to have a plan it's another thing to have the ability to do it and that's where New York City has fallen down time and time again not the managerial ability to complete a plan miss Adams uh you mentioned the recent city of Yes resoning that you were instrumental in helping to pass it's supposed to create uh tens of thousands of units of housing but the experience of past resonings like the one in downtown Brooklyn suggests that it can take as long as 10 years or longer for resonings to result in actual construction if you're elected mayor what would be your plan to get units built more quickly than that we're going to build it faster and just to let Mr cuomo know I've got a plan it's already in the works it is called the city of Yes the city for all something that I have already ushered in so the work is already being done we're hearing a lot of plans and policies but this is something already I'm already doing this work we have already begun the works for the city for all and in that proposal it is the most aggressive reasonzoning proposal in a generation for this city to build upwards of 82,000 affordable units for New Yorkers we want to keep people here i want my children to stay here i I'm an everyday New Yorker i don't want them leaving because New York is not affordable for them and so I have made sure that there is $5 billion that is put into the city for all proposal so Mr cuomo we are going to take care of the HPD vacancies within that $5 billion we're going to make sure that communities like mine in Southeast Queens are protected infrastructure is protected we're going to make sure that we've got extended and expanded access to city feeps vouchers we're going to make sure that there are repairs available for Nicha residents and Mitchell Lama residents and we are going to make sure that home owners also have access to funding to make sure that the home owners have repairs we won't have to look at foreclosure in the volume and we don't have to look at deed theft in the volume i'm already doing the work i'm already there thank you and and still on housing and to bring the last two of you into it um Mr tilson you said in the last debate that your housing construction plan is the opposite of Mr mum Donny's more private sector less public can you elaborate on that in your 60 seconds and then we'll hear Mr manny argue for his approach sure um if I were to summarize my plan in four words it'd be unleash the private sector that is the only way to rapidly uh build to anything like the scale that we're talking about i said it's the opposite of his plan because his plan is to spend a hundred billion city dollars uh to uh build affordable housing so uh my plan I don't think this should take 10 years if you truly do it and it's not just zoning rags it's all the whole bureaucracy uh going through the city government agencies um it's going through the whole UERT process uh this can be done uh Austin Texas is a good example their rents went up uh 25% in the year 2021 the city leaped into action quickly changed its zoning rules they increased supply by 15% in three years and rents dropped by 20% i don't just want to stabilize rent i think we can drop rents in this city uh that's the objective um but right now it's outrageous that businesses and real estate developers have to hire expediters to deal with the city bureaucracy so it's a it's a much bigger problem and the mayor controls uh most uh or all of this thank you Mr madan i met a grandmother in a senior center in Brownsville and she came up to me and told me that she'd been on a waiting list for seven years for senior housing and that she wasn't sure if she was going to be able to stay in the city any longer the reason that my campaign is committing to building 200,000 truly affordable homes is because if we don't we will lose the very New Yorkers who built this city and we will lose them unless we rapidly scale up the programs we already have programs in HPD like SAR senior affordable rental apartments Ella extremely low-level affordability the very kind of programs that are built for the New Yorkers who are being priced out of the market and we do this while also ensuring that it is easier to build even for the private sector we end the requirement to build parking we end this peacemeal approach that we've taken instead having a citywide comprehensive planning approach these are the kinds of ways in which we can actually ensure that we start to build more than four houses per a thousand people that we actually start to get up to Jersey City and Tokyo and build the housing that's necessary in this city um to finish this round by a show of hands I will translate for the radio audience how many of you would support a rentstabilized rent freeze this year hands up if you do uh okay the ones whose hands are up are Stringer um my momani and Lander not up state the question please would you support your donors who gave you $2.5 million to freeze the rent in the rentation system this year a rent freeze this year yes or no mr cuomo would I vote for a rent freeze this year yes i'd leave it to the rent guidelines board now who controls them the mayor we appoint them the law controls them you should read it the law didn't control you did it you should read it miss Adams your hand was not up was it why not it was for Yeah it was Oh it was it was there has to be a balance there's hand was was not up okay that was a a yes or no and finally also on a show of hands on rent freeze or no a listener to my show asks "Would you be open to tying rent increases to landlord rates of return their profits rather than simply on one year's costs?" Yes or no if you're open to tying the increases to profits rather than one year's cost increase who would say yes to that change or that proposal uh I don't see any hands Brian it is part of the formula already it's part of the formula it is part of the formula now you look at a variety of factors including net operating income relative to cost as it should be that Mr lens is right that is the law you look at the costs that the landlord is uh incurring and that's how you set the rent increase if you do but also the profits the profit margins yeah they do an economic analysis that's where the rent guidelines board does katie thank you and this question is for Mr cuomo because it did come up earlier many voters are grappling with how to disqualify you to disqualify you or not after the sexual harassment findings that led to your resignation as governor how do you argue people should consider that factor and we'll let the other candidates give their take yeah I would I would ask them to look at the facts and not the political rhetoric that you hear on the stage uh I said when the report was issued it was all political that's what I said and I said nothing was going to come of it four years later we've had five district attorneys Democrat Republicans upstate downstate they've all looked at them nothing has come of them whatsoever there has been one civil case that's been resolved i was dropped from the case so absolutely nothing has come except political fodder for my opponents and political fodder at the time do any other candidates want to chime in mr andrew you admitted at the time that you called a 25-year-old staffer into your office and asked her questions about whether she'd had older partners and whether she was available and intimated that you were looking for a partner everybody here knows that you sexually harassed women that you created a toxic work environment we're here with all these all these cutuny students many of them young women i went to the city college commencement there's a the validictorian is going to come work at the Department of Homeless Services i don't want to have to tell her "Don't go work at city hall because the mayor is a sexual harasser." Those are just boldfaced lies at the time and fright it's frightening that you can look at a camera and lie that easily you admitted it at the time i never said that i never said that and by the way that has been totally disproven by every court that has looked at it every legal proceeding everyone yes they do sir a report was issued the DA's looked at it they all disagree with you i was dropped from the case so that those are the facts the Biden Justice Department and the attorney general of the state of New York and again it was reported that you admitted at the time that it was a mistake to call that 25year-old into your office folks can check the record and the attorney general you know if he worked for you you would fire hang on hang on hang on hang attorney general's just wrap up yeah the the attorney general's report was determined by a court to be hearsay and not a finding at all i understand Mr lander is just a the women accused you of sexual harassment that's what you're calling hearsay the district attorneys looked at all those complaints and not a single case we're going in circles let's let's move on better than the fact that this is disqualifying the man resigned to be obvious the problem the problem is we do not get to address the issues that New Yorkers care about that's just what we're going to do just hang on hang on we are done with this topic we're going to move on to the next one candidates let's talk about quality of life concerns about of disorder and public safety the number of complaints about disorderly conduct in New York City nearly have nearly tripled compared to the preandemic year of 2018 arrests for disorderly conduct have risen significantly but New Yorkers still say they are less satisfied about their quality of life than in the past so we're going to start with you Mr lander do you want the NYPD to address quality of life violations or is there some other way to do it and how would you address concerns about quality of life without violating constitutional rights or opening the door to accusations of illegal profiling as mayor my number one priority will be to end street homelessness for people with serious mental illness when I talk to people about what's influencing their quality of life what would they like changed they would like to be able to get on the subway and feel safer last week I talked about a friend whose middle school student was pushed to the ground by a mentally ill homeless person but we don't have to be a city where a couple thousand of our mentally ill neighbors sleep on subway platforms and the sidewalks and stoops of our buildings uh and yes of course NYPD have a role to play in keeping neighborhoods safe getting guns off the street but no amount of policing is going to connect a homeless mentally ill person to the housing and services that they actually need the plan that will is called Housing First it's working in Houston and Denver and Salt Lake City we used it here to end street homelessness for veterans and I will use it to end street homelessness for people with serious mental illness and that'll be a city with a dramatically better quality of life for everyone okay um Mr straer let me try to answer your direct question which is the issue of quality of life and to me uh as someone who has spent his entire life here who's raising kids here uh people do not want to live uh with trash they don't want to live with broken sidewalks they don't want uh a 311 system that can't resolve the basic day-to-day issues that New Yorkers face we've gotten away from that kind of work you know swagger to me is different than swagger at city hall today swagger means I feel satisfied when we help somebody get the services we need how I'm going to do it specifically we got to have a deputy mayor for quality of life and institute what I call quality stat meaning there's a lot of agencies apart from the police that actually are responsible for the day-to-day running of the city and resolving complaints and issues we need to measure that we need to look at the data at 311 we need to do the follow-ups i'm going to be the mayor in the C in the Ed Cotch mode that comes to town hall meetings and communities just like Ed did as controller roll my sleeves up go in front of hundreds of people and say "Let me have it what do you want what's going on?" And I will resolve a complaint to 24 hours that's the kind of mayor that we need in this city to keep people here and to make sure that we become the beacon of the greatest city in the world okay Mr mani you know when I speak to New Yorkers across the five burrows what I hear time and time again are these very kinds of complaints complaints around the cleanliness of our streets complaints around whether the parks that they love can actually be maintained and so many of them come back to a mayoral administration that has underfunded city agencies time and time again literally requesting to take garbage cans off of sidewalks that's what we have had for the last four years i'm proud to have been endorsed by DC37 the single largest labor union representing municipal workers in this city the people who run this city trust me to lead this city and what I will do is fully fund each one of those agencies to ensure that we are not just providing public service we're providing public excellence so that each and every New Yorker is finally receiving the quality of life that they deserve living in this city okay and so Mr my really in a lot of ways what I'm getting at is that the city government and a lot of voters frankly will reflexively reach for the NYPD as the best tool to handle what they perceive as disorder which some people say is kind of a stepping stone towards crime or in some ways a precursor to it what's your take on that and how would you handle it yeah uh let me first say Scott you got a little bit of swagger you got some sneakers on today so I I don't want you to discount yourself by the way I got it from you yeah all right all right very good so so let so let so let me say this let me say this look I I walk the streets i take the subways just like you do and part of the reason that people are frustrated with politics is because you walk the streets you take the subways and then you listen to folks on this stage and it's completely divorced from your reality here's what I want to do i think we need police and clinician teams in our subways and our streets 24/7 to get people on a path to real recovery new Yorkers are compassionate people but we want to ensure that people are actually getting that help so I want stabilization centers in every burrow so that we can deliver that help public safety requires us to do two things we understand that police officers are necessary but we also have to invest in the things we know prevent crime and disorder in the first place that's why I want 50,000 more summer youth jobs so that it is universal we have no young person on a waiting list uh waiting list stop telling our kids what not to do without giving them something to do i want universal afterchool as well so that we can have a safe place to be and have our families have a place where their children can stay okay Mr tilson yes to answer your question directly about enforcing uh more quality of life issues uh for example I ride my bike almost every day in the city the ebikes are uh fast and dangerous and were riding up on the sidewalks blowing through red lights and cops started enforcing it and I can tell you being out there every day they're now obeying the law um that uh is the kind of thing that contributes to the feeling of lack of safety um I will say that my uh uh what I would not do is demonize the police by calling them wicked and corrupt by threatening to defund and dismantle them as Zoron has done and we are at a 34-year low in the number of police officers there's only one candidate on this stage him who has not said that he would try and build that number back up so um I think his department of community safety which he talks about is just backdoor code word for continue to uh defund the police they are demoralized they are underst staffed um and uh we have created a revolving door where an officer at the Midtown North precinct very close to here actually told me she is still filling out the paperwork for most of her arrest and the criminal is back out onto the street before she's finished did you want to respond i want to say it very clearly because both Mr tilson and Andrew Cuomo's Republican billionaire donors have been lying about me on our television screens and right now i will not defund the police i will work with the police because I believe the police have a critical role to play in creating public service public safety and fundamentally when I put together our proposal for the Department of Community Safety it was built upon the many conversations I had with rank and file officers who had told me that they signed up to join the department to take on serious crimes and yet what they were being asked to do is play the roles of mental health professionals and social workers and that is part of the reason why 65% of crimes in the first quarter of this year are still not solved we need to ensure police can focus on those crimes and we have mental health professionals and social workers to address and tackle and resolve the mental health crisis and homelessness okay and and um I just want to just clarify whitney did did you not talk about my police retention plan or you you didn't Come on Scott why don't you explain Mad Adams I want to I want to bring you in the conversation because you were at city hall when uh the the uh funding question came up that has been interpreted by some as defund the police what was happening then in in that particular session with that particular proposal and if you're elected what would you do about this question of where and when and if the police get involved in quality of life policing thank you for asking the clarifying question Errol very much the FY2021 budget season was a very very tough season for the New York City Council and quite frankly for the mayoral administration as well we were still masked up in the pandemic and New York City was very very underfunded as a city we were looking towards going in the hole if you will so several city agencies had to take a haircut the NYPD was one of those agencies as were were many many city agencies heck the New York City Council we had to take a haircut so there was funding reallocation that happened across the board for New York City because of the pandemic so I mean services were cut many folks out there real realized that some of park services were cut and other services were cut as well unfortunately so that was the climate that we were in quite frankly during the pandemic season as mayor though I know that New York City is fiscally found our issue right now is going to be pro Trump proofing the New York City uh Trump proofing New York City which I am doing right now as one who is negotiating the fourth New York City budget something that no one else on this stage can say and we've already put aside in reserves through my leadership on the council $ 1.9 billion to begin to protect the people of the city of New York from Donald Trump's harsh cuts we want the administration to not natch us go above us we're going to need to make sure that our resources are protected that our nonprofits are protected that our children our seniors our health care is protected and as leader of the city council I've already made a start in doing just that all right thank you Mr cuomo yeah if we wonder why the people uh watching this are frustrated is because of the disconnect of what they're hearing they are afraid on the streets they feel unsafe you can quote statistics all day long they get afraid walking into the subway they get afraid walking down the street when they see a mentally ill homeless person we did defund the police we did we cut $1 billion from the police people on this stage said defund the police that was the chant and $1 billion was taken from the police department mr mandami says he would dismantle the police uh that's his expression mr lander said "I'll admit progressives like me were slow to recognize the problems of crime and quality of life and moped." See it's not so difficult to take responsibility is it that's what he said that they were slow to realize the crime that people were living with we have to get back to safety i would add 5,000 police officers yes we need mental health professionals who also help work with the mentally ill and they're two totally separate things but this city has to be safe opportunity for youth is part of it but if people don't feel safe Errol they're not going to stay end of story okay real real quick yeah i mean I think New Yorkers want accountability they want accountability when people commit crimes they want accountability when officers use excessive force they want accountability when top brass uh violate their office and they want accountability from elected officials so yes I said we were slow to reckon with rising disorder here's how I'm going to actually deliver it you've you've never taken responsibility for one single thing you've done wrong in your entire life not one single thing you should try it sometime okay Miss M miss Adams real quick yeah I just want to clear up the whole defund mystery here that keeps on being used uh as far as the New York City Council and the FY2021 budget is concerned let's just be clear the budget is negotiated with the mayoral administration the NYPD is a part of the mayoral administration and the reallocation of funds was done with the knowledge of the NYPD not in any faroff land far far away i don't know how long you've been out of it uh Mr cuomo but it's been a while so I I just want to make sure that we are clear here tonight old slogans and scare tactics aren't going to make anybody in New York City safer okay candidates thank you candidates we're going to move on to our lightning round where every uh each candidate will answer our questions with a brief response usually yes or no uh I'm going to start with a show of hands one despite changes in technology do you still have a metro card in your wallet show of hands mr myy Mr cuomo Miss Adams still have the Metro Card god bless you um uh let's go down uh name name one department that you would make cuts to we'll go right down the line mr tilson um lightning lightning there's so many to choose from just one i think there's a lot of fat to cut in the DOE budget but there are other areas I would invest more in doe means department of education not uh the board of elections mr stringer as controller I identified efficiencies in every city agency to make them more uh run better and efficient so it's not about cutting or targeting one agency it's really about doing due diligence in all the agencies sorry Mr mar yeah I think uh New Yorkers experience city services every day it's not about who has what it's about how we're delivering uh so I think it's important that we are efficient in that i think we can shift some uh uh some funding from the uh economic development corporation to our city's general uh general fund okay Mr mom done i think we have to end our city's addiction to consulting and contracts we're currently paying Mckenzie millions of dollars to design a trash can we don't have to do that mr le last year we paid out $2 billion in claims against the city i'll put them on the books of city agencies so they have an incentive to reduce them they can keep half the savings it's hundreds of millions of dollars we can save mr cuomo the city government hasn't been properly managed in 12 years it needs an overhaul from top to bottom uh that's what I think has to be done where'd you start where would you start i think if housing is a top priority I would start with HPD because that's one of the first jobs we have to start okay Miss Adams you know I I I'm still negotiating the city budget the only one on the stage that's doing this thing so uh let's just be real about it the mayor actually implemented pegs that took away headcount for many many city agencies so I don't think that we're in the space right now to cut anything we do need to reform and revamp city agencies so we what we need to do is take a look at as was said contracts we've got a lot of bloated contracts out there primarily because of the cronyism under Eric Adams [Music] in this lightning round just three yes or no questions from me is it logistically possible Miss Adams first to close Rikers by 2027 yes or no no mr cuomo no the law is a joke mr brander not a joke but not by 2027 either mr mumani no eric Adams has made it functionally impossible mr meyer no but it needs to close mr stringer no and Mr tilson no not by 2032 either we'll go the other order on yes or no do you support an expansion of red light cameras Mr tilson absolutely mr stringer yes absolutely and I've voted for it in Albany thank you Mr meyer mr mani yes and unlike Andrew Cuomo I know you can't turn right on red in New York City mr lander uh yes and with real accountability for drivers who do it mr cuomo yes miss Adams and one more we'll start in the middle with Mr mandani have you ever voted for a Republican no Mr my I have not but I voted for a Democrat that ended up caucusing with the Republicans that's why I ran for state senate in the 2018 mr stringer ever voted for Republican Mr trump never in my life mr tilson sure bloomberg miss Adams no mr cuomo no and Mr lander no this this first question um it's a two-parter i'll start with you Mr tilson what is your favorite park or playground in the city and would you as mayor commit to at least 1% of the city budgets going to the parks department yes um I raised three daughters in the city they're now in their 20s uh shout out to my youngest graduating from college in two days actually and um I was uh ran the Daddy Olympics in Central Park every day we uh circled the park and had a number of favorite playgrounds i I'd say the favorite we called playground number one which is at 96th and fifth and uh I've actually called for permanently making the parks budget 1% of the city budget so it increases with the city's budget uh there parks are our gems mr stringer 1% for parks because every kid deserves outdoors and we have got to make sure we fix all the parks not just in wealthy communities but look my favorite park is where the kids want to play so if it's on a basketball court I'm there if it's Central Park I'm there rockefeller Park i'm there i have no decision making it It's all up to them mr myra uh my favorite park is Prospect Park and uh my parents let's go yeah prospect Park in the house um my parents are here uh in the audience with us and it is where I learned how to ride a bike it is where they took me throughout my childhood uh so I absolutely would commit to 1% uh to our city's parks it's a shame that we have not done that already mr mongani I would absolutely commit 1% of the city budget to the parks department i'm proud to have done so over the course of this campaign and I have to say that my favorite park is a story park mr lander uh Zelner Meyer is right on this question prospect Park is the best park in New York City and uh my kids are here and they played baseball and learned to ride their bikes and I was just at the Celebrate Brooklyn concert opening uh yes we'll do 1% but we've got to focus it on the parks that need it most to pass a law that helps us do that and as mayor I'll make sure we focus on those parks that have been way too long neglected thank you Mr cuomo yes for the 1% and I'd also like to see the private sector get involved with conservies not just Central Park it's beautiful it's Manhattan but there are other burrows also Queens Brooklyn Bronx Staten Island etc my favorite park is Cunningham Park uh in Queens and uh 1% but let's get conservancy set up for all the parks miss Adams we definitely have to get to the 1% we've been fighting in the council for as long as I've been in the council to get there uh my favorite park has to be Basley Pond Park in in Jamaica Queens of course that's my district my park but we got to get rid of those fragmiteies and this is a quick one it's a one or two-word answer i'll start with you Miss Adams which burrow have you spent the least amount of time in staten Island mr cuomo i would say Staten Island mr lander staten Island mr mandani uh-oh the beacon of free transit staten Island mr i'd say Staten Island mr stringer i've been doing this i've been everywhere so no all equal they They are all equal including Staten Island mr chelsea it was almost a sweep all right we are going to take a short break now when we come back we'll bring you the cross-examination round where each candidate will ask one opponent one question and because this election will require New Yorkers to rank their candidates we want to take a moment to explain how rank choice voting works courtesy of the campaign finance board the debate will continue in just a few minutes [Music] there's a new way for New Yorkers to have their say in city elections a way that gives voters more choices and can lead to more diverse winners it's called ranked choice voting 74% of New York voters chose to use it in primary and special elections for city offices mayor public advocate controller burough president and city council you won't see rank choice voting in general elections or elections for state or national offices but in rank choice voting elections you can now rank up to five of your favorite candidates for each office here's how ranked choice voting works on your ballot you'll see candidates listed in rows and numbered rankings and columns pick your first choice and completely fill in the oval next to their name under the first column like always you can just vote for your one favorite candidate and submit your ballot but you might like several people if you have a second choice fill in the oval next to their name under the second column do the same thing for your third fourth and fifth choices if you have them a few don'ts don't rank the same candidate more than once it won't help them and it takes away your chance to rank the others who are running don't give the same rank to multiple candidates it could disqualify your ballot don't worry this is a new process and you can always ask a poll worker for help or for a new ballot if you make a mistake so how do ballots get counted with rank choice voting if one candidate gets more than 50% of everyone's first choice votes they win the election right away that's it if no candidate gets more than 50% ballots will be counted in rounds round by round the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated so if your top rated candidate is eliminated your vote goes to your next highest choice this keeps going until only two candidates remain [Music] the person with the most votes wins ranked choice voting is already popular in many cities around the country because voters find that it helps more voices be heard now it's our turn get answers to your questions and learn more at nycfb.info/rcv [Music] welcome back to our Democratic primary debate for mayor live from John J college of Criminal Justice we're more than halfway through the debate with the seven leading Democratic candidates now it is time for the cross-examination round that's when each candidate gets a chance to ask one question of one rival our order was selected at random and we'll begin with Scott Stringer thank you all um my question is for uh Adrien Adams so during the City of Yes negotiations you successfully uh brought billions of dollars uh in in in benefits and opportunity on top of City of Yes as you know I've been campaigning uh because I really do believe we could have a realistic opportunity to take those parcels of land and turn them into affordable housing do you envision or would you sort of signal that that idea could be coupled with funding the funding that you obtain when you start thinking about your own uh housing implementing your own housing agenda if you were mayor well Scott thank you for the question and thank you for recognizing that I have ushered in billions of dollars for housing for the people of the city of New York thank you for that i as mayor I would be open to any any feasible option of housing expanding it for the people of the city of New York we got to continue this my work has just been the floor and not the ceiling so I'm more than willing to to expand on the great work that I'm still doing as city council speaker okay thank you Mr my thank you my question is also for Speaker Adams uh we uh have seen uh over the past two decades 200,000 black New Yorkers leave this city uh we know that this is a top issue for most New Yorkers the cost of living here and I'm wondering if you can talk to us uh about ushering through the city of Yes and what implications that has for black New Yorkers who are struggling uh to stay in this city and what we could be building on going forward love the question thank you very much Senator and again thank you for referencing the city of Yes championed by the city council speaker Adrienne Adams thank you so much um yeah within within the proposal which which the city council renamed city for all we've built in um financial safeguards for for black families um many of whom I'm sure as you know also uh we've seen leave our city in droves over the past two decades and we want to make sure that our families stay here that is why we have built in within that $5 billion in the proposal we are protecting homeowners so that homeowners in disrepair can repair their homes that is built in through the financing we've also built in uh uh uh repairs for Nicha families for Mitchell Lama uh Mitchell Lama residents as well rodale Village is a Mitchell Lama for the second largest Mitchell Lama in the city of New York within my own district so we have built in financial safeguards to protect our black families families of color from leaving New York this is something again I live in a black family i don't want my children to leave so this is for their protection as well thank you Mr tilson yeah um Zoron you're a proud member of the Democratic Socialists of America uh you refer to each other as comrade and uh right now on the DSA's website it said it calls for the uh government ownership of all uh major industries to decriminalize uh all misdemeanors including uh theft and assault to empty our prisons and to disarm dis uh dis dismantle and defund the police so your words are very reassuring but uh this is what I read from your people and I wonder if you uh will disavow this or uh implement it as mayor [Applause] yes like David Dinkens I am a member of the organization and the organization's platform is not the platform of this campaign the platform of this campaign is the one you can find on the website at zuronfornyc.com that's a platform that is going to deliver an affordable city for New Yorkers who are currently being priced out of what is instead the most expensive city in the United States it's one that we're going to deliver public safety to each and every New Yorker and we're going to do so by recognizing the critical role that police have to play in that and also by creating the Department of Community Safety so that police do not have to do the work of mental health professionals and that we can follow the example the evidence-based policies we've seen be successful elsewhere in the country and start to divert those mental health calls outside of the police department so the police department can focus on the seven major categories of crime okay next is from Miss Adams yes thank you you i I was looking for Errol to look up because he's confusing me oh okay thank you i have a question for uh Assembly Member uh Mamdani i know how to pronounce your name thank you very much Speaker Adams um Assembly Member um I've raised a family in New York uh I have over 20 years of experience in the private sector i have led the city council through many many challenges uh taken this city through three successful budgets and billions of dollars in in city budgets now working on our fourth which will also be successful um and have been continuing this work for a number of years on the city council in a recent New York Times article you said that you were the most qualified person to be mayor of the city of New York uh given what I've just laid out do you think you're more qualified than me to lead the city i I I very much appreciate your work and your leadership and your track record speaker I think that each one of us on the stage will say that we are the most qualified to lead this city because if we didn't believe that then we would have no business running for mayor and ultimately I believe that because I believe the most pressing crisis we're facing here is one of affordability and that is something that my campaign has been laser focused on and that is why I'm proud to say that we are going to address it by freezing the rent for millions of rent stabilized tenants by making the slowest buses in the country fast and free and by delivering universal child care to each and every New York family mr lander your turn peter will you please stand up andrew this is Peter Arbini he's been trying to ask you a question for five years his father Norman His [Music] father Norman died because of your disastrous order sending people with COVID into nursing homes then as you admitted this week you personally altered the state health department report to underount the death total to hide the death total and then evaded and lied to these families for 5 years so tonight will you finally apologize to Peter and other grieving New Yorkers or will you just keep or will you just keep gaslighting them with blather about what a great job you claim you did maybe maybe where you come from in St louis facts don't matter but here they do so let's talk about that uh first of all on nursing homes uh 1.2 2 million people died of COVID in the United States it's horrendous 83,000 people died in New York State it is horrendous it was a pandemic unlike anything we have ever seen when it comes to nursing homes we now know the facts because numerous studies have been done new York State implemented the federal guidance set by CMS CDC Dr fouchy we implemented it other states implemented it uh that has been proven over and over and over again uh when you look at the total death toll in New York the rate of death in nursing homes were number 38 out of 50 states only 12 states had a lower rate of death than New York which is incredible in my opinion since we had it first and worst and get does not give enough credit to the women and men in those nursing homes who work so hard mr arbini uh lost a father i am very very sorry for that he brought a legal case against the state the legal case was dismissed when you look at the papers on the case uh the there was no COVID positive person sent from a hospital to the nursing home while Mr arbini was in the nursing home so it is factually impossible Brad that he got COVID okay from someone coming from a hospital okay mr mom Donnie you know I I just I I want to address something first which is that you're going to ask a question or not i I'm going to ask a question but Brad Lander is more of a New Yorker than Andrew Cuomo is and to hear all this ask the question to to hear all this about St louis we have to just make this clear now all of us on this stage Wait who are you going to ask your question to i'm asking it to Andrew Cuomo okay i feel like most people would have known I'm going to ask Andrew a question i knew i knew i knew and you knew we did we both knew we knew we agree all of us on this stage have spoken about how Donald Trump is an existential threat to democracy to this city to this country and Andrew Cuomo you have received millions of dollars in funding from the very billionaires who put Donald Trump back into office will you now look at the camera and tell your super PAC to return those millions of dollars and to your own campaign to return that close to half a million dollars to ensure that this is not a race that is bought by those same Trump billionaires i know I know you don't understand the law but it would be illegal for me to direct an independent expenditure comma one question one answer so uh that's the law okay number two I dealt with Mr trump as governor uh we had very very difficult times i got more help for New York from Trump than anyone expected new York was one of the few places that he did not send in troops when he sent them everywhere else because he didn't want to deal with me that's the fact i got him to send us masks so are you going to return the half a million dollars to your own campaign and then on your point about oh billionaires let's remember this i am the candidate on the stage who is uh supported by more labor unions than any other candidate 650,000 working men and women support me then why is it went to my Let me finish let me finish because they know me and they know my record the firefighters worked with me in storms the utility workers endorsed me because I was in Puerto Rico putting the power back together after the storms uh every major union that has endorsed okay has endorsed me greater than any candidate on the stage you get you get the final question Mr cuomo yeah you get the final question to anyone on the stage yes my question is to uh Mr tilson uh we learned today that uh shockingly uh Mr mandani is not part of the DSA but we've heard his plans over and over and over you're a financial man you're not a politician Mr tilson uh probably smarter than the rest of us in that regard uh but you've heard his plans for how to build housing how he's going to finance the housing free buses how he's going to build grocery stores uh and he said he can do all of this and our taxes will not be any higher than New Jerseyy's taxes question you're a financial expert uh you've heard this 157 times is it feasible and financially possible that he is telling the truth his the biggest piece of his uh he says he will raise the revenue to uh pay for all the things that I can't even keep track of all the spending promises he's making by raising the corporate tax rate to New Jersey New Jerseys level what he is failing uh to acknowledge is that there are already many other city and state taxes that in fact if his plan were implemented would result in New York City businesses paying double the tax rate of New Jersey triple that of Connecticut five times that of Florida which would lead to an exodus of businesses and jobs and crush our city but even more preposterous is that this all has to go through Albany there is no appetite for what he is calling for and even if it were to pass the corporate tax rate state uh tax uh increase statewide he's assuming that all the taxes all around the state that the legislature would just hand it to New York City that's truly delusional so I want to double taxes in New York City i want to double spending in New York City but I want to do it the way Mike Bloomberg did it by doubling the size of the economy which he did over 12 years it's economic growth that we need not destructive uh policies that would crush growth okay thank you thank you candidates we're going to move on to a new topic and I'm going to ask you as we come down the home stretch we're in our final half hour we're going to keep everything a little tighter and I'll thank you in advance for your cooperation um let's talk about the fact that um even before the war between Israel and Hamas an unofficial but important task of every New York City mayor has been to bring New Yorkers together even on issues of passionate concern where finding common ground is difficult so let's talk for a few minutes about what kind of job you would do in this area mr manni u what is your message to Jewish New Yorkers who are supportive of Israel and fear for their safety in this current political climate that I hear them and that I have heard them over the course of this campaign and before that after the days of the horrific war crime of October 7th a friend of mine told me about how he felt sitting in his synagogue for Shabbat services when he heard the door open and a chill went up his spine as he turned around not knowing who would be there and I heard that even just recently from a Jewish man in Williamsburg who told me how he locks the very door that used to be unlocked for so many years out of a concern for his safety i will protect Jewish New Yorkers and deliver them that safety i will do so as the next mayor of this city and ultimately what I will also say is to New Yorkers who have a disagreement with me on any issue but also on the question of the Israeli government's policies that that disagreement I know is rooted in a shared sense of humanity and in the words of Ed Cotch if you agree with me on nine out of 12 issues vote for me 12 out of 12 see a psychiatrist what and just as a followup Mr mandani when it when it comes to the boycott and uh divestment movement uh aimed at at Israel which you have supported even before this campaign um what would you say to people who feel that that is an existential threat and that despite your uh position of wanting to keep people safe they they feel like you actually either have a different agenda or are in league with people who have an agenda that is makes them feel fundamentally unsafe i've been very clear and I will continue to be so which is that at the core of my politics is a belief in non-violence and that my support for compliance with international law is support for non-violent movements that seek to do so and build on the example that we saw with South Africa and ultimately what my focus what my focus will be however is not on what is happening outside of this city it is going to be on making sure this is a city that is affordable for each and every New Yorker what is currently the most expensive city in the country finally be one that the working-class New Yorkers who built it can afford to live in and to ensure that each and every New Yorker feels represented by me as their mayor because you can win an election with a majority but it is your job to represent every single person across this city okay m Mr cuomo according to Muslim American organizations you never made a public visit to a mosque during your 10 plus years as governor why the reluctance yeah I believe I have i would have to check the record but let me just let me correct the record here if I might the uh Mr mandani is dangerously Oh wait wait wait let me let me let me let me ask you about this this because this was an issue in the 2018 campaign when you were running for reelection um when they said that in seven years you had never visited a mosque did something happen in the the several years beyond that i believe I have i know I've participated in many for forums uh with imams i am not off the top of my head i can't tell you where I went but uh I'll check the record and I will so so let me let me just get to the point then i mean what would you say to more than 760,000 Muslims here in the city um about whether or not you would reach out to them make them feel welcome make them feel protected at a time when I would say I would say we are a city of immigrants i welcome them i love them i'm not Mr mandani i'm not anti-Semitic i'm not divisive uh I didn't say I would boycott Israel i didn't say I would devest from Israel i didn't say I would sanction Israel i don't give forums to anti-semites i don't give forums to extremists who blame America for 9/11 i didn't say that I would boycott Cornell Technon because they're pro-Israel he is the flip side of the coin of Trump trump says he'll boycott Cornell because they're anti-Israel he says "I'll boycott Cornell because they're pro-Israel." The vision is our death in this city this state and this nation and the vision is what Trump sells we should be selling unity not the division that this man is spreading mr matt you you It is It is ridiculous to hear Mr cuomo talk about himself as a man of unity when just yesterday we found out that his super PAC was sending mail that artificially darkened and lengthened my beard to stoke the very fears of that division in this city the reason he doesn't have a message for Muslim New Yorkers is because he has nothing to say to us because he doesn't see us as if we are every other New Yorker and ultimately the campaign the campaign that I am running is a campaign that seeks to go beyond the politics of the Trump era where candidates on the stage describe me as a monster describe me at the gates where they say that I am in fact the other this is a campaign to bring people together it's why we have the support of Jewish and Muslim New Yorkers it's why we have the support of people across the five burrows real quick yeah uh you don't bring New Yorkers together by saying President Obama is evil and pro President Obama is a liar you don't bring them together by saying Hakee Jeff is like George Wallace and the DIS sending ads to Hakee Jeff with watermelons cotch didn't say uh what you said he said he said anyone who threatens Israel I would never support okay that's what Cotch says and that's you we're going to bring in the other candidates i want you to tell me and we'll do this 60 seconds and keep it a real 60 seconds um what would you do as far as bringing people together around this particular issue which has brought people into the streets and caused so much controversy in New York errol all New Yorkers deserve to feel safe no matter who they are um as city council speaker I have allocated millions of dollars uh to combat anti-semitism as mayor I will fully fund to protect all New Yorkers something that our current mayor has not done we're going to fully fund the Commission on Human Rights to make sure that we are taking care of all of the citizens of the city of New York right now that commission is significantly understaffed 20% of their headcount is lacking and as mayor I'm going to make sure that that headcount is appropriate and that we are truly looking forward forward to unifying this city anti-semitism has grown and it is at its peak in New York City that is unacceptable it should be unacceptable to everyone on this stage and it is something that as mayor we are going to unify this city once and for all and treating everyone as equals mr lander I am a proud Jewish New Yorker and raising these two beautiful Jewish kids in this city is one of the great joys of my life it's remarkable what a haven New York City has been and I'm going to fight like hell to keep it that way you can't have to look over your shoulder every time you go to a Jewish communal event like in DC and Boulder um and I will keep Jews safe and I will keep Muslims and everyone else safe i was at a mosque for Eid last week up in the Bronx of Ghana and Nigerians beautifully out in the street that's the New York City we want many Sundays I go to Union Square for a vigil with Israelis for peace who are calling for a return of the hostages for an end to the war in Gaza a real ceasefire for the famine to be ended by humanitarian aid I believe passionately in the vision of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state but for that to be real the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza has to end and Israelis and Palestinians have to find a way to peace and mutual self-determination that is not the job of the mayor of New York City but what a mayor can do is set a model for how you bring people together mr mari part of the magic of our city what makes our city so beautiful the reason that people come here from all over the world is that you can be your full self and be able to walk down the street and not feel like you are threatened by violence you can live out your entire being pray to who you want to pray to go to whatever religious setting you want to and you should have the protection of this city we have seen over the past few years an unequivocal rise in anti-semitism and we must deal with that head on we must be unequivocal about how we deal with it but the role of the mayor is to keep everyone safe and that is what my plan is i want to restore the funding for the office to prevent hate crime i want to ensure that our commission on human rights has all the personnel that it needs to i want to extend education so that all of our New Yorkers understand the rich Jewish history but we also have to ensure that Muslims feel protected in this city as well that we have their back as well that is what makes New York City New York City that's the kind of city that I'm going to lead okay Mr stringer well let me let me be very clear i am not confused about what I believe in or who I am i am a Zionist i believe in the Jewish state of Israel i'm against BDS it's anti-Semitic and my wife works at the Jewish Museum Jewish Heritage Museum which is a living memorial to the Holocaust so when I found as we all did the horror of what happened in Washington the Jewish museum I really thought about my wife going to work and coming home and I thought about my Jewish kids two kids who one just bar mitzvah and I worry about them and as mayor I'm going to protect the Jewish community but here's what a mayor really has to do we've got to go back to what I used to do when I was controller and burough president when the Muslim community called me and said "We've had people killed outside our mosque we need you to be there to support us." I was there when people were slur being slurred Muslims because of 9/11 and prejudice was happening all over the city as one of the highest ranking Jewish officials i was there when we needed to bring halal food into the public school system i brought the Muslim community and the Jewish community together in the controllers's office it was a UN moment and we brought the city together that's what a mayor has to do okay Mr tilson yeah i want to be the mayor who ends the chaos uh not globalize the inifat i'm part of New York's Jewish community through my wife and three daughters we've been members of Central Synagogue for 25 years and I can tell you uh New Yorkers uh Jewish New Yorkers don't feel safe um uh in the audience today are two Columbia University students uh both Jewish uh uh David and Maya they have had their education disrupted have been harassed cursed at uh David's twin brother also at Colombia was punched in the face uh uh by one of these mobs and I hold the people inciting these mobs the leaders um yes Zoran Mdani um uh partly responsible for this and um when you use words like accusing the only when you use words uh referring to the only Jewish state in the world uh like genocide and apartheid when you call for divestment and all that is inciting these mobs and he says shared sense of humanity and all these nice sounding words uh but he has a double standard because if you search his Twitter feed 15,000 tweets uh Sudan Pakistan Saudi Arabia don't appear yet the word Israel appears more than 50 times the word genocide appears more than 26 times so that tells you where his heart is okay briefly i am being smeared for echoing the same words as Israeli historians Amos Goldberg and Daniel Blatman i am being mischaracterized on the stage for echoing the same words of a former Israeli prime minister Ehud Mayor who said recently "What we are doing in Gaza is a war of devastation it is indiscriminateous limitless cruel and criminal killing of civilians i say these things because far too often we take what can be a place of disagreement and instead start to broach beyond that and these kinds of characterizations they are part and parcel of what leads to dehumanization in our city which is why an elected official in our own city has called for me to be deported it cannot be disentangled from what's going on right now okay thank you candidate thank you this next question this next question is about education as mayor you would be leading the largest public school system in the country with more than 900,000 students all with differing needs mr tilson you made education your campaign's focus one of its focuses and have been critical of the current performance of the city's public school system one of the new challenges the next mayor will face is a new requirement to limit the number of students in a class how would your administration this class handle this class size bill i oppose this class-siz mandate it's going to balloon the already $40 billion budget by about a billion6 a year and this has been tried around the country and it is one of the least effective ways it does not move the needle on student achievement because while of course all of us want smaller class sizes everything being equal in fact that is that benefit is offset by the requirement to suddenly hire thousands of teachers who are less experienced and less qualified than uh existing teachers and so the benefit from lower class size is offset by uh less experienced less qualified teachers and guess who uh guess which students get those teachers it is disproportionately low-income minority kids this class-size mandate would uh not only hurt our budget but uh hurt those children so uh I've dedicated my adult life to trying to reduce the educational inequalities in our system as one of the founders of Teach for America uh on the board of Kip Charter Schools for more than 20 years and uh I will put the interests of kids first in a system that by and large today runs for the benefit of adults great thank you miss Adams same question the class size bill how you would handle as mayor the class size bill yeah thank you very much no matter how we feel about the class size uh uh mandate it is the mandate so it is something that we have to follow uh I too believe that you know as one coming from southeast Queens I was education chairperson of my community board and I can tell you that I walked into many a classroom over the past 15 years or so and have seen the effects of too many students crammed in one classroom so that is a mandate it is a mandate for a reason what we need to look at though is the allocation of funds within the DOE the DOE has the largest budget within the New York within New York City of all agencies and we need to take a look at that money and we need to make sure that our children are the recipients of the resources within the DOE sometimes there there are contracts there are other things going towards the DOE creating that inflated budget but we have to make sure that our children are truly the recipients of that massive DOE budget thank you Mr meyer same question uh so as many of you probably already know I'm a proud public school kid went to PS 161 in Crown Heights uh they are the crown jewel of this city i would not be here without it i think it's really important uh that we invest in our schools the reduction of class sizes was something I was proud to vote for in the state legislature because we know and the data tells us that smaller class sizes have better outcomes for the students and for the teachers but I'd also like to see some more investments in our mental health for our students we have not appreciated what has happened over CO 19 the learning loss that is going to have impacts for many years to come we have to support our students we have to support our providers and in addition to that y'all know what I'm going to say one after school for all every kid in this city from kindergarten all the way through 12th grade we need it and we need it now that is what I'm going to do as the next mayor thank you and and this is another education issue this question will be for you Mr mumdani what's one thing you would do to improve educations for students with significant or complex abilities who can't be served by their neighborhood schools no I think first and foremost we need to ensure that they also have highquality tutoring which we have seen some steps towards part of this also comes back to the ability to attract and retain teachers across the DOE and currently what we're seeing is that on this discussion of class-siz mandate we would need to hire estimates say close to 10,000 teachers when we're talking about paraprofessionals we have so many vacant positions because these positions simply do not pay enough i support legislation in the council 1261 which would create a recurring annual bonus so that we can actually fill those positions because ultimately what every child and what every parent of that child deserves is the same highquality excellent public education and we need to ensure that every single dollar we spend is a dollar that goes towards that because as some of my fellow candidates have said there is too much money in the DOE that is currently being spent on consulting and contracts that are duplicative that are not standardized and that could actually be redirected back into the classroom to ensure that every single child is receiving that education thank you Mr stringer the same question well look I'm I'm the candidate on this stage who has real skin in the game i have two kids in middle school right now and I see what overcrowded classrooms mean to them and to their friends and so the bottom line is if you want quality education you got to have smaller class sizes and I have to tell you you go to parent teacher night and you talk to the teachers they know about every child they know about our kids and all the kids they do an amazing job but you know what 40% of them are leaving after 5 years because we're not retaining them we're not training them we're not uplifting them tier six that Andrew Cuomo did was the death nail for them leaving i was somebody who believed as controller that managing their pensions actually kept them in the system and I did that well but in terms of what I audited a DOE it is a cesspool contracts secret deals paytoplay we're going to upend that when I'm mayor i know where the bodies are buried there i've been waiting to do this for a long time but education is the lifeblood of this city and we need to give parents the resources they need because every kid has something every kid needs a little extra and the kids with parents who have resources they get it but the kids who don't struggle and I want to stop that and end that thank you continuing on with education for Mr cuomo over the last decade the expansion of free prek and 3K has been used by hundreds of thousands of New York families but there have been issues with implementation and even critics who say other educational initiatives should be prioritized what would be your administration's commitment to these programs well we pioneered uh prek on the state side and we're very proud of it the more we can do the better uh but let's be realistic about education uh we all agree and you've heard many good ideas here uh we want more power of professionals more teacher centers more afterchool care smaller class size uh but we also have a terrible fiscal problem and this is before the Trump tsunami so if the state is going to mandate a smaller class size and we can say let's agree it's a good idea the state has to pay for a smaller class size otherwise we're just going to be savaging other parts of the budget and part of the mayor's job is to advocate for New York City and to have state legislators say "We think it's a great idea here's the mandate you must do it but we're not going to fund it is disingenuous." There's an old expression passing the buck without passing the bucks yes smaller class size please help us fund it so we don't savage other parts of education thank you Mr lander yes uh my mom is here who's a lifelong public elementary school guidance counselor uh and both my kids are prek to 12 uh public New York City public school students uh the New York Times opinion panel today specifically praised my education track record and what's needed is clarity that lower class size that better student teacher ratios are good and a way to get it done uh Andrew is actually right that more money is needed from the state and I've documented how much as controller and said here's how we're going to go about doing it we should start in those schools that are lowincome uh and highly kids of color and get class size done there we should do collaborative team teaching especially to make sure we can provide extra services for students with special needs there are some amazing models of school mergers like Brooklyn 305 United the next mayor can reduce class size and dramatically improve schooling for all our kids thank you all so much i I want to ask a [Applause] a different kind of public safety question mr stringer you go first in this round the city says there were 252 traffic deaths last year that's a far cry from zero as in the name vision zero that Mayor Delasio gave to the city's initiative on this what would you do then we'll go down the row to get us much closer to zero traffic fatalities well look I think that we have to own up to the fact that vision zero needs a lot more vision and a lot more safety protocols in place we need to have dedicated bike lanes but we also have to have zero tolerance for people who are abusing this privilege and using bikes and ebikes on the sidewalks you can be protransit pro bike lane but also pro- safety we put kids' lives in danger and seniors so I would certainly revisit education and making sure we have zero tolerance for that interference reduced deaths the other thing I want to just say uh as an elected official you know we have a lot of elected officials uh my friend Brad is one of them that goes to every vision vision zero press conference and then talks about the tragedies that befall these kids but yet racks up speeding tickets and then says "I'm sorry." We have got to as mayor say to the politicians who get the placards I will pull those placards if you show up at a vision bureau press conference to that and your answer to the question uh yesterday I was proud to be announced uh to be endorsed by streets pack which is the set of people who have been fighting against traffic violence for decades um uh and uh you know I haven't gotten a a speeding ticket in 4 years so Scott Stringer can talk all he wants but what I will do this is my time Scott um what I will do uh is re-implement i passed as a city council member the reckless driver Accountability Act which looked at those folks who are the most reckless drivers the most speed violations the most red light violations and would impound their car uh unless they actually started to improve eric Adams let it expire even though there's good evidence it was working i'll expand it to make sure it's in all of our traffic courts get it back in place vision zero we can have in New York City zero traffic deaths that's infrastructure improvements on our streets uh and that's holding reckless drivers accountable mom Donnie I'll add another wrinkle from a listener to my show who submitted this question on pedestrian safety mopeds ebikes and scooters are out of control and pose a danger but what specifically can be done to get them to obey traffic laws so what would your response to the original question and that listener be all in one minute yes sir okay well first of all thank you Elizabeth for the question if you are listening right now i'll take that first you know the key thing here is we have to understand that so many of the violations of our laws as pertaining to our streetscape are also violations that are the natural result of an economic model of these food delivery apps when we're talking about so many of the delivery workers the orders that they have to deliver within a time frame there is no way for them to be able to obey the laws of the road and one of those apps is Door Dash door Dash has given Andrew Cuomo super PAC $1 million that is why when you get those mailers that are lying about me you see the top three donors at the bottom one of them is Door Dash the reason they give that money is because they want to influence labor and street safety regulations they want to ensure they can continue to operate with impunity i'm going to ensure we come back to a streetscape that is actually one of coherence and order and we're going to do that by taking on those apps to your original question what we need to do is finally fulfill the streets master plan we are so many miles behind the building of bus lanes and protected bike lanes those are critical not just for safety but also to ensure that we are finally following the law which is something that Andrew Cuomo would find to be just guidance not a requirement mr cuomo your turn yeah um the uh I think Mr madani starts with the assumption that uh if you receive money from someone then you will do what they want that may work for him but I'm not for rent and I'm not for sale uh so we wonder who's funding DSA and who's funding his BDS movement on the specific question campaign finance board and you can see all the donations yeah uh on the specific question uh if I could do it again I passed the law on ebikes uh in Albany legislature passed it also but I signed it we left it up to local regulation that was a mistake because here in New York City the local reg regulation has been slow uh the bikes are moving too quickly it's mayhem too many people are getting hurt i would have the apps uh the apps responsible to license the bike and they have the responsibility for ticket tickets that are issued to that bike it's their financial liability uh they police it i would reduce the speed limit down to 15 miles per hour period because if you're riding a city bike you are as much uh a subject of uh the speeding ebike as anybody else thank you Ms adams yes the the thing that uh no one is speaking about when when you're looking at planning there is a city agency that is responsible for that they are called the DOT so you know as leader of the city council we have been in oversight with the DOT many many many times and as one of my colleagues mentioned they are not in compliance with the streets master plan the the agency entrusted by the mayor of the city of New York is not in compliance and we have had hearing after hearing after hearing the the bottom line is that DOT needs some tweaking in order for us to get this right so my commissioner as mayor would be one that is able to handle the work put before him or her to do the work that the department of transportation is mandated to do for the people of the city of New York they wanted the responsibility to keep New Yorkers safe and as mayor it would be my responsibility to make sure that they are make that they are in compliance we have Mr mary and Mr tilson yet to go in this round mr my uh thank you look I am in relatively good shape uh I'm on my feet a lot i'm a pedestrian but I have had to dodge out of the way uh of an ebike or a moped and if you are an older adult uh that is a really scary prospect so without question there has to be regulation but the demand is created by us and the apps that are making many many many times over on that demand should have some responsibility and accountability to ensure that things are safe as you have heard we are out of compliance with the law there are new categories of vehicles on our streets that need to be regulated and our streets master plan must be implemented i want to ensure that we have protected uh bike lanes and that we have more bus lanes but I was proud in Albany to vote for a super speeder bill because we have too many reckless drivers on the road uh who have done and demonstrated that they don't belong coming to the end of the debate Mr tilson briefly yes uh I was almost um death number 253 last year uh I was hit on my bike uh crossing Park Avenue and so I ride I ride my bike uh almost every day in the city uh I agree completely completely uh with Zelnar about these super speeders as far as I'm concerned there cannot be enough of these cameras that uh automatically catch and ticket people who run red lights and who are speeders and I think we can use technology both for ebikes and for cars that uh speedgate um uh so I actually am glad to see that Mayor Adams recently adopted something I've been calling for for months that ebikes cannot go faster it has to be built into the bike cannot go faster than 15 miles an hour and anyone who's a chronic speeder as you can revoke their license of course but an uh an alternative middle path is you can install technology on the car that does not allow them uh to break the speed limit thank you very much okay candidates we are just about done we're going to have time for just a couple of lightning round questions because we've got literally something like a minute left so uh let's go with a show of hands should the city increase the number of permits for street vendors uh hands up are Mr tilson and Mr stringer and everybody okay across the board um from what you know and there's no room for discussion here legal cannabis shops are they good for the city on balance mr cuomo says yes nobody else if they're properly regulated mr manny yes okay um oh boy you got one of those one lightning round question everybody probably wants to know the answer with uh of raise your hand if you know who you're ranking second on your ballot there you go mr tilson who is it uh Andrew Cuomo it's not me [Applause] nobody else i am devastated should I say who you ranking second all right should penalties be increased for fair beating in the subways no no hands they're not enforced okay and then I guess uh who still who here still reads actual printed newspapers everybody these are not hand raised questions and I'll start with you Miss Adams other than rent or mortgage name one expensive thing in New York you wish was cheaper very fast what other than rent or mortgage groceries groceries mr cuomo no food food mr lander childare childare mr mandani childare Mr myers childare Mr stringer 100% childcare mr tilson groceries and starting with Mr tilson name a politician you have a good relationship with quickly cory Booker cory Booker mr stringer mostly everyone on stage mr majority Leader Andrea Stewart Cousins mr momani congresswoman Alexandria Okasio Cortez i'm proud to be endorsed by Mr lander uh State Senator Liz Krueger mr cuomo yep mike Bloomberg david Patterson thank you for the endorsement m adams Attorney General Tish Jen okay that is going to do it for this debate i want to thank the candidates and our partners and all of you at home for watching if you missed any part of this debate you can see it in its entirety at ny1.com and the Spectrum News YouTube account that's where you can also find our other primary debates remember early voting begins this Saturday primary day is on June 24th thank you for watching and listening and have a great evening [Music] good evening and welcome to our postdebate special i'm Bobby Kusa you just finished watching the final official Democratic primary debate for mayor between the seven leading contenders here is a look at the debate stage as they wrap things up there at John J college i'm joined now once again by New York One political reporter Courtney Gross Bridget Bergen senior reporter for WNYC Gothamist Greg Smith investigative reporter at the news organization The City and Ben Max of the Center for New York City Law at the New York Law School and the host of the Max Politics podcast uh we're going to go around the horn greg let me start with you uh highlights impressions what's your take on the debate i thought it was very personal i thought and in particularly with Brad Lander like really getting in Cuomo's grill like in a very in I think in a very personal way not just you're a politician you lie blah blah blah it's like you you you you're a sexual harasser and and but but like right in his face and and then also the same thing with Manny and Cuomo it was very personal and whether it's it you know separates people and make lets them rise to the top and get above Andrew Cuomo that remains to be seen but that was my kind of gut on the whole thing i mean I think similarly we talked about before the debate Bradlander picked up this unconventional New York Times endorsement today um I think he was emboldened i think he came onto that debate stage ready to remind viewers that he had been endorsed by the New York Times even if it was slightly different than it has been in the past at least three times we counted that that he mentioned that and well he should if if he thinks that will help his campaign but to Greg's point he was also much more on the attack in a more direct way than I think we saw in the first debate i remember in the first debate his line that stuck stuck in my head was I have a plan for that i have a detailed plan for that and while I think that resonated with Cuomo because you heard Quuomo sort of jab back we know a lot of people have plans but it's about execution um Lander was not pulling any punches he went after him on sexual harassment he went after him on the MTA workers um and I think it was rattling i think we saw some flubs from Cuomo that we didn't see in the first debate so that's my first take on it i think this was largely a three-person debate with Cuomo Lander and Mammdani some of that was the stage craft they were sort of in the middle um Adrien Adams had a couple moments trying to get in there but the others were a little bit quiet i was surprised that people didn't jump in a little bit more to try to get some more of their moments and especially going at either a Cuomo or a Mom Donnie i didn't think it was notable which we've sort of seen signs coming that Adrien Adams did use her question to question Mom Donniey's qualifications and juxtapose it to herself very interesting moment he handled it well of course he's very good at going back with people as we saw throughout the debate and I really think it continues to be one of the fascinating takeaways of this that you have Zoramani standing up on this stage and saying I do not want to defund the police when this was very central to his political identity for a long time brad Landers also moved away from that position i mean this he's not alone in that but that was a striking moment to me from this debate for him to really get up there and say that so so clearly i think I'm going to agree with the rest of the panel and I love how we didn't check with each other before we went on live television and we all have the same assessment is I think that Bradlander had a pretty good night whether it was the New York Times endorsement whether he decided to have a different tactic this time around or I should say the New York Times opinion pages panel endorsement whatever that is um I think he came out knowing what he had to do he was much more on the attack like Bridget said and it was effective so much of this is whether it's fortunate or unfortunate it's television it's about FaceTime it's about how much cam how much is the camera actually going to be on you and just as a result of going on the attack like that he gets to be on television more people get to hear more about him and I think we'll have to wait and see if we get a poll which I believe we will at some point next week a a public poll that's legitimate that we can actually turn to but I think it did some damage andrew Cuomo at the end of the night looked a bit tired to me looked exhausted looked like he was kind of done with hearing all the other people that were on the stage to the left and the right of him in addition in a way that it didn't happen in the first debate but the sexual harassment claims and the resignation and the nursing homes came up and landed and this attacks landed I think a lot more forcefully than they did in the first debate particularly on the sexual harassment issue and the fact that Brad Lander was to was able to specifically say referring to I believe Charlotte Bennett in this case that a 25-year-old was in an office alone with Andrew Cuomo when Andrew Cuomo was questioning her about her sex life and that has been in depositions and court papers and most people believe that that is fact all right we're actually going to go now uh up to John J college where our Ayana Harry has been standing by as the live debate audience exits John J college we're going to get a little bit of the color from up there good evening Ayana good evening to you Bobby this is certainly a critical moment in the race for New York City mayor as we are now 36 hours away from the start of early voting in the Democratic primary and yes tonight seven candidates as you just saw right here on New York One they stood on a stage here at John J college debating topics and issues for 2 hours in front of an audience of 300 people and there were several fiery moments during this debate in fact some of the most heated moments were exchanges between three of the candidates who have continued to be at the top of the polling i'm talking about former Governor Andrew Cuomo state assembly member Zoron Mdani and city controller Brad Lander at the start of the night the candidates were all asked a pressing question how as mayor would you handle protests over immigration policy similar to what's unfolding in Los Angeles the conversation shifted to discuss migrants living and working in New York City and then Brad Lander went after Andrew Cuomo uh the MTA goes through a rigorous contracting process they should never have hired illegal immigrants if it is true uh but obviously I obviously I had nothing to do with them hiring what you said what did you call them if anyone was undocumented or they didn't pay the proper wages I had nothing to do with it it would have been pay them the proper wages you cheated them out of the prevailing wages they were due and the healthcare they were due didn't contract with them at all the MTA contract who appoints the chair of the MTA oh I see so every contract that the MTA contracts you want me to be held responsible this one yes because 100 immigrant workers got cheated out of $2.5 million and their healthcare and the orders came from on high yeah so you say if so that exchange started when Brad Lander pressed Andrew Cuomo about subway cleaners that were hired by the MTA when Andrew Cuomo was governor and Brad Lander he also had several questions about Andrew Cuomo and his leadership during the COVID 19 pandemic and in fact Brad Lander even invited someone to the debate to help make his point andrew this is Peter Arbini he's been trying to ask you a question for 5 years his father Norman [Music] His father Norman died because of your disastrous order sending people with COVID into nursing homes then as you admitted this week you personally altered the state health department report to undercount the death total to hide the death total and then evaded and lied to these families for 5 years so tonight will you finally apologize to Peter and other grieving New Yorkers or will you just keep us or will you just keep gaslighting them with blather about what a great job you claim you did mr arbini uh lost the father i am very very sorry for that he brought a legal case against the state the legal case was dismissed when you look at the papers on the case uh the there was no COVID positive person sent from a hospital to the nursing home while Mr arbini was in the nursing home so it is factually impossible Brad that he got CO from someone coming from a hospital okay so many tough moments between Andrew Cuomo and Brad Lander zelnor Meyer he defended his plan to build or preserve 1 million units of housing over the next 10 years zelnar Miley said as mayor he would be able to fulfill this promise saying that it is necessary and needed and all of the candidates on the stage they were asked where they stand on a rent freeze for the city's approximately 1 million residents currently living in rent stabilized apartments take a listen how many of you would support a rentstabilized rent freeze this year hands up if you do uh okay the ones whose hands are up are Stringer um my mom and Lander not up can I restate the question please would you support your donors who gave you $2.5 million to freeze the rent in the rent authorization system this year a rent freeze this year yes or no Mr cuomo would I vote for a rent freeze this year yes i'd leave it to the rent guidelines board now who controls them the mayor we appoint them the law and Bobby there were so there are a few other moments that I do want to touch on as well on public safety zoron mom Donnie said that in fact he does not want to defund the NYPD and you could hear gasps from the audience when Whitney Tilson was asked what uh city agency would he cut funding from and he mentioned the department of education we also heard another reaction from the audience when Adrien Adams spoke about bloated budgets of city agencies saying it was due in part to cronyism from Mayor Eric Adams and there was a moment where we actually saw all of the candidates agree and have the same answer to one question every single candidate said they did not see a way in which the Riker's Island jail complex could logistically clo be closed by 2027 bobby all right Harry standing by outside of John J college we're now going to go inside of John J college we have our very own anchor Errol Lewis standing by errol we all have our own takeaways from the debate we were watching uh from the comfort of the New York 1 studios but you were there on stage just a few feet away from the candidates uh how did it feel out there what were your impressions from the two-hour long debate hey Bobby uh the the debate itself was somewhat contentious we knew it was going to get that way i was a little surprised that it took as long as it did frankly uh so we got through a couple of questions and then they sort of started sniping at each other a little bit and then you know kind of sniping a little bit more um there were a number of candidates who had these kind of set pieces referring to people in the audience and and and otherwise you know sort of trying to really hammer home their points in an unusual way strictly speaking within the rules but certainly not within the spirit of the rules where we wanted them to talk to each other and not start bringing in a lot of extraneous stuff but I thought it went fine the audience got into it a little bit i think just about the right amount there was a little bit of excess but nothing that could stop uh the the flow of the debate so we got through most of the questions that we thought we really needed to ask and you know before any viewers start sounding off we of course made some choices about what we were not going to talk about and there were of course a lot of important issues congestion pricing comes to mind that we didn't spend a whole lot of time on you have to make choices and um I thought the choices we made um really matched what the candidates wanted to talk about so to that extent I thought it was a good successful debate yeah and I mean even even spots where uh candidates kind of went off script or or pivoted from the question that you guys asked in order to attack one of their opponents I thought were were very revealing exchanges like you asked in Andrew Cuomo about his age and his ability to do the job and then he kind of turned that into an argument for his own experience and the lack of experience of Zoron Mdani and then similarly uh when you guys asked Zoron Mdani about Israel then it became a back and forth between him and Cuomo about whether Mamani was anti-Semitic and whether Cuomo uh is an Islamophobe and I thought you know we we learned a lot from those exchanges which you guys kind of allowed to to play out a little bit yeah you know that was one actually it was one of the few the few questions that you know as you know Bobby you've done this enough uh you try not to ask too many questions that you don't really know the answer to um but I was genuinely curious to hear what the former governor had to say about serving you know 11 years as governor of the state and never going to a mosque i mean you know there's 1.4 million or so I think is the number of Muslim uh living in New York State 760,000 here in the city um I you know was a little I was a little surprised to tell you the truth all right and Errol uh when we went to the lightning round at the end we got of a lot of agreement on uh some of those questions you guys asked including the burrow they had spent the least amount of time in which was Staten Island almost across the board um what did you think of those responses and uh I'm guessing you probably had some good light lightning round questions that you had to leave on the cutting room floor oh I'm I'm glad you mentioned that because I I had some waiting here and I was just waiting I was waiting for a chance to ask you um the Staten Island It didn't surprise me look it's a Democratic uh primary let's keep that in mind this it would be different if it was October and they had said "Hey we're we're all skipping uh Staten Island it's the least Democratic I should say um it is the most Republican uh of the burrows percentage-wise and you're just not going to find a lot of Democratic votes there so it's not a good use of time uh even if you factor if even if you don't factor in taking the vote or taking the bridge um here are some questions I did not get a chance to ask who is your personal favorite New York City mayor um here's one i'm genuinely curious about this one how much sleep do you get on an average night a very revealing uh kind of a question right i mean if somebody says four hours that tells you something about them if somebody says eight hours that tells you something too uh and hopefully most people would be somewhere in between but yeah we had we had some we had some good ones i I would tell you more but I think we're going to need them for some other debates that's right all right Ariel excellent job tonight we're going to leave you now to go to our own Bernardet Hogan who is in the spin room at John J college she has some live reaction from the candidates themselves who just got off the stage a minute ago i believe Zoron Mdani is with Bernardet now hey Bernardet hey there Bobby and that's right the candidates just walked off the stage and I have with me now Zoron Mdani the 33-year-old youngest candidate in this Democratic primary and Mani I want to talk to you first about that question the inexperienced criticism is something that both Andrew Cuomo and a couple other candidates were trying to poke a hole in a lot of your messaging tonight what did you make of that and do you think that they were successful i think that Andrew Cuomo would rather talk about my record than his because his is a record of cutting Medicaid it's a record of stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from the MTA it's a record ofounding the more than 13 women who have come forward to credibly accuse him of sexual harassment and my record is one that I'm proud of it's a record where I have fought and won for working-class New Yorkers across the five buraus and the crowd today was Richard Chow who was a taxi driver that I organized with over many many months who lost his brother to suicide because of the level of debt in that crisis and together we won $450 million in debt relief and tonight was an example of that track record and the willingness of New Yorkers and the desire to turn the page on the experience we've already seen now another point that came up that you continued to correct Andrew Cuomo about is the pronunciation of your name now this also came into multiple questions about his inability or his refusal to visit mosques in his previous years as governor and then since then what do you make of all this and do you think that that was a pointed attack against you and do you see something beyond that perhaps it's frankly troubling you know New Yorkers deserve a mayor who sees in each of them the humanity that they have and that is the mayor that I'm seeking to be but to see a candidate for this same position be either unable or unwilling to say my name correctly it's not that difficult it's M D- AI Mamani and to even name a single mosque that he would have visited over 10 years in leadership i mean we have a million Muslims living in New York City you have to ensure that Muslims like every other New Yorkers actually have their safety and their equality and their respect be recognized by the leader of the state we did not see that from Andrew Cuomo tonight now another point that Andrew Cuomo again he used his Q&A portion to ask Whitney Tilson someone that is polling at the bottom of this group to ask him to talk about your own fiscal policies and how you'd be able to pay for it talk to me about that how would you convince Albany to pass attacks on the wealthy when the governor has blatantly said "I do not support that." You know I think it was telling that Andrew Cuomo would rather ask Whitney Tilson a question than me and ultimately it's a illustration of the fact that he's scared he's scared of the fact that where he once had a 40point lead in the final round that we have now brought that down to two points and ultimately this is the same governor who found $959 million to give Elon Musk in tax breaks for his Buffalo billion pet project a project that Cuomo promised New Yorkers would yield $30 of economic benefit for every dollar invested and what we got in return was 54 cents he has always been able to find money for the wealthiest in this state and in this country what he has been unwilling to do however is to tax those same wealthy to fund the very kind of public schools that he starved for so long now what will you focus on now as early voting is about to start we have a couple of days a couple of weeks left until election day what's your plan and what more do you need to do to build out your base right i know you pull very well with young people very well with those in hippie Brooklyn how are you going to continue your outreach to black New Yorkers to Latino New Yorkers you know I think you can see in our polling that our support is rising across the board we're proud to be the only campaign other than Andrew Cuomo to have cleared double digits with every single ethnic group in this city and ultimately what we're seeing is that the work we need to do is the work that we've already done we just have to keep doing it that means building our 36,000 volunteer team knocking on nearly a million doors and making clear that the most expensive city in the United States has to become affordable we're the campaign that's going to do so all right thank you so much we'll leave it at that thank you and so Bobby just going back to you in house talking to Zoram Donnie someone that has pulled consistently in second place behind Andrew Cuomo and he's going to continue to do outreach again we heard from other candidates tonight i'm going to send it back to you all right Bernardet Hogan at John J college thank you for that report we are now going to go out to Brooklyn our Kelly Mena has been standing by in Flatbush at a watch party hosted by the campaign finance board kelly I think you were able to find uh some undecided voters earlier in the night were you able to get back with them and see uh whether they had any change of opinion by the end of the night bobby I was able to find them again and get another one who actually switched their final decision i have them standing right next to me right now we spoke to Kayla earlier and this is Andre standing next to her kayla you told us earlier today that you didn't know who you were voting for after watching that 2-hour debate what are your thoughts and what will your slate look like well Kelly I have a lot of thoughts right now i definitely have a better idea of what I'm looking for i will say Adrian she impressed me a lot as a black woman who was poised confident many times she said that she was already doing many of the things that they were asking and that impressed me a lot um as I mentioned also I follow AOC she did talk about Mendani a lot and so that is also someone who I have my eyes on but definitely this has inspired me to research a little bit more but Adrian impressed me a lot andy you mentioned AOC has endorsed Zoran mom Donnie does that naturally want you to put him on your slate and vote for him it makes me interested intrigued but I will say that I'm the kind of person that likes to research a lot more before making a final decision so that does put him on my radar but I still want to research a lot more and what did you think about Cuomo's performance tonight would you rank him at all no I wouldn't um I was amused by the way that it went i was amused because a lot of them um a lot of the candidates had a lot to say about him and to bring out about him and his responses really and truly just proved more to me that he's not someone I would look for hey and Andre we spoke to you earlier you said that you're switching what your slate looks like you're now putting Zelari first instead of Zora Mandani and putting Zora Mandani second tell us why you came to that decision after watching the debate um I still like Zoron madani is like top he's a great progressive but I think the answers that um my Mary my Zelnor said today was very specific about black people in particular that like I took to heart because I feel like uh black people have not been uh pushed to the forefront in New York City and we are the heart of New York City as a majority especially in Brooklyn so I just rank him a little bit above um Mandania right now was there any specific answer that stood out for you when it came to Zelner Meyer that you think is the top issue for you going to the voting booth um I think he he mentioned childc care a lot but also he brought up a lot about Prospect Park which is like one of the best parks out here and that's like he's a Caribbean local guy from Flatbush too so I've always ranked him but I always thought that as a progressive Madani was better but I like he spoke to my heart today mr delore you know my would you ever rate Cuomo on your slate he's number five he's the last one dead last thank you so much so you heard it right there are not big fans of Cuomo here but of Adrien Adams and of Exelery early voting starts on Saturday so we'll see if tonight's debate performance makes a difference for many of those candidates back to you Bobby all right Kelly thank you so much i'm going to go back to my panel uh it seemed like for the first good chunk of the debate the sort of central uh contrast was Cuomo talking about his experience and portraying Manny not just as inexperienced but as dangerously inexperienced and he kept bringing up this example of Donald Trump in 2020 during the George Floyd protest wanting to send federal troops into cities across the country and you know the way Cuomo tells the story Trump backed down from sending troops to New York because you know he was tough in the face uh you know of Trump's threats which I don't know you know how much truth there is to the way that Cuomo's telling the story but I mean uh that is sort of the central tension i'll go to you first Greg between mom Donnie and Cuomo uh is it experience or is it youth and you know what are the virtues of each i mean I think we all know what the deal is with that andrew was the governor he was the attorney general he was the HUD secretary so I don't see how anybody can say he doesn't have experience manny has very little experience this is all true but I don't even think that this is how people are going to vote because I think it's more about personality and the one thing that I got a huge kick out of was you have Manny going at Cuomo about he's got Trump billionaires giving him money right so what does Cuomo say about that he immediately says "I have more unions than you do than anybody else does." And then he goes at him about Door Dash that was a good one so Door Dash this is you know a million dollars was given which is by by far the biggest donation in in any of this to Andrew Cuomo's independent expenditure committee which is supporting Andrew Cuomo cuomo doesn't have any direct or is not supposed to have any direct connection to it so Door Dash gives all this money and MD's take on that is that that Cuomo's in Door Dash's pocket and so what does he say when they start asking about the you know outofcontrol ebikes he says Cuomo says we need to hold the apps uh responsible for the tickets and to have them license the drivers so I think that what what's happening here is that that's just a pure class argument that they were trying to like go at each other and it wasn't as simple as it wasn't as simple as mom Donnie wanted it to be but Cuomo also has to explain to people why he got a million dollars from Door Dash so uh we're running short on time i'm going to go around with the the three of you and just get uh maybe tell me what moment from the debate you think is going to leave a lasting impression like what was the most memorable moment that you think people are going to be talking about as we head into election day i think there was some pretty spicy exchanges throughout but you know I'm thinking listening to Greg about how Mandani responded to that attack from Quuomo you know if Cuomo wants to play up his experience then Mandani is trying to characterize it as baggage and then went on that list of "Yeah I never respond with in disgrace." Um you know I I think it was a pretty effective um back and forth between the two of them but you know I do think it's clear that Cuomo brings a whole decades of experience to the table ben and Ben and Courtney I was going to give you guys a chance but we are actually running so short on time we're going to have to cut off the panel uh as we head to our next half hour of programming that's going to do it for tonight's post show thank you everybody at home for joining us for our coverage of the final Democratic primary debate for mayor and if you missed any of it you can watch the debate in full on ny1.com or on the Spectrum News app and of course early voting kicks off on Saturday just about 36 hours from now it goes through to the following Sunday June 22nd and primary day itself is on June 24th the New York One anchor Chris Welch is up next with more news have a good night everybody