IT’S TIME FOR A WOMAN Hall would lead to a better N.Y.
3 hopefuls contend change in gender at City
Forget Hizzoner, New York may finally be ready for Herhonor.
With the Democratic primary less than two months away, three leading hopefuls in the mayoral race made their cases during an online forum Monday, touting their policy ideas and noting ways that they said women lead differently.
“Women in leadership positions treat the people around them differently and are really much more effective at building teams and inspiring people to work incredibly hard,” said Kathryn Garcia, a municipal government veteran who stepped down as sanitation commissioner before launching her first-ever run for office.
While New
York City politics are a more or less constant cauldron of scandal, this year’s mayoral contest comes during a striking number of lows for men in high places. Garcia made a passing reference to one of those — recent allegations of sexual assault and harassment against city Comptroller Scott Stringer.
“Women need to be in leadership positions. We’ve seen that over the last week, again,” she said.
During the forum hosted by local advocacy group Downtown Women for Change, Garcia and fellow hopefuls Dianne Morales and Maya Wiley also described how they’d bring their personal experiences to bear on the top elected job in the city.
“As someone who is running as a mother for this next generation of kids, we cannot afford to lose,” said Wiley, a former top legal aide to Mayor de Blasio. “I am going to be a mayor that is … a Black woman and is going to be very explicit about how we pull together and solve what’s broken and fix what ails us.”
Morales echoed Garcia’s comments, saying, “Women in government are actually much more effective at negotiating and compromising to get legislation passed.
“That’s a function of really focusing on and prioritizing the larger community,” added Morales, former CEO of nonprofit Phipps Neighborhoods.
Quizzing from the moderator on policy issues revealed similarities between Garcia’s and Wiley’s positions, with Morales standing out as the most radical of the three.
On education, Wiley said she would tap an incoming boost in state funding to the city to hire 2,500 new public school teachers, with the goal of reducing class size. She also emphasized providing help to kids traumatized by COVID and by the ongoing spike in violent crime.
“We are at risk of losing a generation, but we don’t have to be,” Wiley said. “I’m going to put trauma-informed care in the schools, particularly … [ones] with high rates of violence.”
Wiley repeated her promise to scrap the controversial SHSAT test that screens admission to the city’s eight specialized high schools. Garcia said she would keep the exam while increasing the number of specialized high schools and expanding enrichment programs in younger grades.
Garcia also wants to trim $130 million from the Education Department bureaucracy and spend the funds on schools instead.
Morales, who’s also anti-SHSAT, called for steps to ensure city students, who are largely from communities of color, “see
themselves reflected” in their teachers and in their curriculums.
Tapping some of the most revolutionary rhetoric from critical race theory, she also promised to “transform” the city wholesale.
Morales promised to “center and elevate our working class and our vulnerable communities” and “confront the deeply rooted systems and structures that have made this current moment of inequity and injustice possible.”
That includes a “green new deal” featuring workforce training on a scale not seen since the Great Depression-era Works Progress Administration, among other steps, Morales said.
Garcia and Wiley have also promised major investment in job creation.
On small business, Wiley touted a $30 million grant program to help mom-andpop shops manage debt and keep their doors open. Garcia repeated promises to cut red tape.
On the NYPD,
Morales again stood out as the furthest to the left. She’s promised to cut $3 billion from the police and create a “Community First Responders Department” to respond to mental health and other emergencies.
Wiley also wants to keep the NYPD out of mental health crises, and cut the NYPD budget by $1 billion. Garcia said she’d focus on hiring officers who live in the city as part of an effort to build trust with communities, shying away from talk of defunding the police.
“New York City can have a police force that is respectful of everyone regardless of the color of their skin,” said Garcia.
After 109 mayors who were men, with the latest embroiled in a seemingly never-ending game of tit for tat with the governor — there was a sense at Monday’s forum that the city is ready for a change.
“This city can be stronger, more fair and more just,” said Wiley. “This is a historic moment.”
De Blasio leaves office at the end of the year due to term limits. Candidates in the June 22 Democratic primary include Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, former Obama and Bloomberg big Shaun Donovan, ex-Citigroup executive Ray McGuire, Stringer and businessman Andrew Yang.