Ray’s original
McGuire touts his math for city recovery
Mayoral candidate Ray McGuire pitched himself as the real “math” candidate in the mayor’s race during a speech Friday to dozens of city thought leaders.
During a morning talk with the Association for a Better New York, which represents dozens of prominent businesses in the city, McGuire got into the nitty-gritty of how he’d pay for a jobs accelerator program that he says would help add half a million new jobs to the city’s overall workforce.
McGuire, a former Citi exec, rattled off several dizzying budget calculations during the event and assured those listening that, through assistance from the most recent federal stimulus, his math makes sense.
“I’ve gone through and pressure tested this against the biggest critics out there,” he said. “And it works.”
His presentation seemed to be intended to draw a contrast between himself and other candidates who have not always been forthcoming or clear on how they would pay for their policy proposals.
And it came a day after New York Times columnist Paul Krugman called out Andrew Yang, the mayoral candidate currently leading the pack, as someone who
“hasn’t done the math.”
In a column that many attending the association’s event were sure to have perused, Krugman wrote: “If Yang does become mayor, it will be because voters have a vague sense that he’s a man with deep insights proposing smart progressive policies.”
“Unfortunately,” he concluded, “that’s not who he is.”
Yang, who ran for president in the most recent Democrat primary and lost, has touted his ideas with the slogan MATH — Make America Think Harder, but he hasn’t always been ready with all the answers when it comes to how he’d pay for some of his plans, such as his signature basic-income proposal.
Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, who’s placed second in recent polls behind Yang, has proposed “tax-free Tuesdays” in which sales taxes are suspended at local businesses. He said he’d pay for that through taxing video streaming services like Netflix, but critics have questioned his ability to enact such a tax.
McGuire, with his decades of managerial and finance experience, has consistently touted his up-fromthe bootstraps backstory — a man who grew up poor in Ohio, got a good education and rose to the heights of corporate finance — and that didn’t change Friday during his presentation.
What came into more stark relief was the level of detail McGuire was willing to offer when it comes to some of his key policy proposals.
McGuire proposes a “comeback” job accelerator that would subsidize 50,000 small businesses, a sales tax rebate that would put $500 million into the hands of small business owners and a streamlined city permitting process for small businesses. If elected, he vowed to do away with fees associated with launching a new business for at least two years after its founding.
To do all of this, McGuire would appoint a deputy mayor in charge of women- and minority-owned businesses charged with creating more accountability, connecting new entrepreneurs with mentors and requiring the City Council to provide small-business impact statements along with the bills they hope to enact into law.
To pay for it — and for his plans to help restore some of the city’s infrastructure — McGuire plans to use federal stimulus funds and also about $300 million generated through his jobs accelerator program, money from the city’s capital budget and savings through 5% reductions to city agency budgets.
Central to all of that, he said, is maintaining and elevating the city’s quality of life through public safety and quality public education. McGuire vowed to make sure that every city public school kid is literate by the end of the third grade.
“I know there are slight differences between running a company and running a city, but as someone who has managed thousands of workers globally, I believe the best predictor of future success is past accomplishment,” he said. “And as they say in the neighborhood, I have receipts.”