[MUSIC - Marden Hill: Hijack]

Amina Srna: It's the Brian Lehrer show on WNYC. I'm producer Amina Srna filling in for Brian today. Welcome back, everyone. Now we'll look at the latest news coming out of the campaign trail in the New York City mayoral race. Former Governor Andrew Cuomo had a bit of a turbulent week. He's gained some new endorsements from critical unions in our area. A new Siena poll released yesterday showed he's still got a double-digit lead with voters.

Some breaking news. The New York Times reported this morning that a group of elected Democrats from Brooklyn, headed by Congresswoman Nydia Velázquez, will endorse a slate of candidates today in an attempt to stop quite Cuomo's momentum. Additionally, Cuomo's campaign failed to secure public matching funds from the New York City's campaign finance board as his closest competitor, Zohran Mamdani, racked in $4 million. Cuomo's not strapped for cash, though.

According to Politico's playbook, his campaign received about $250,000 donation from billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, a known supporter of President Donald Trump. What does this say about the Cuomo-Trump relationship at a time where many voters are looking for a mayor who will stand up for the city against attacks from Washington? More on this soon.

Also in the news, Cuomo's campaign released his housing agenda over the weekend, but it's not the policies listed that garnered attention. Reporters from the subscriber-funded local outlet Hell Gate found evidence that the former governor used ChatGPT to write up his "Addressing New York's housing crisis plan." Joining me now to cover the latest from the mayoral race is Elizabeth Kim, Gothamist and WNYC reporter, and Brigid Bergin, WNYC's senior political correspondent. Liz, Brigid, welcome back to the show.

Elizabeth Kim: Hi, Amina.

Brigid Bergin: Hey, Amina.

Amina Srna: Let's start with the campaign finance news. Brigid, your headline in Gothamist yesterday reads "Cuomo gets no public campaign funds. Zohran Mamdani takes home 4 million." Taking that first part of the headline, what happened with Cuomo's campaign? Didn't he raise enough cash to qualify for matching funds?

Brigid Bergin: Yes, I mean, he definitely did. The campaign got into the race with about less than two weeks before that first filing deadline. They raised money like gangbusters. They raised about one and a half million dollars. To be able to qualify for public matching funds, you need to have raised $250,000 in matchable donations from 1,000 donors here in New York City, and they hit both of those thresholds, and they did it really fast. However, it requires some pretty rigorous paperwork to document these donations properly.

The issue that they ran up against is they were missing some information to properly account for those contributions. The Campaign Finance Board then said that they will not get funding in this particular cycle. They are expected to get it in about a month, May 12th, which is the next time that candidates who have technical errors that they need to resolve are able to fix them and then get that payment.

Amina Srna: Cuomo's campaign is stacked with veteran staffers. Making a mistake like this is quite surprising. Is the paperwork just difficult to fill out?

Brigid Bergin: His campaign is stacked with some longtime staffers. His compliance attorney is someone who I've talked to for previous stories, Rachel Harding. She's very smart, very reliable, but she's the person who has to make sure that all the details are square. This is a more complicated process. It's different than fundraising at the state level, which is something obviously the governor has done many times over. There was a piece of information that they were not capturing using this particular piece of software.

As some other outlets also reported, Politico had Jeff Colton tweeted a screenshot of an email that went out to a bunch of Cuomo donors, a pretty urgent email, asking them to fill out this additional form that would capture this information that was missing from their filing. This is their first time with the New York City campaign finance system, which notoriously, is challenging and rigorous for candidates. In the same vein, he is vying to be the city's chief executive. He's bringing with him and running on a campaign of competence and managerial experience. While these errors might appear small, collectively they start to raise some questions about whether or not he has been studying up enough for this particular job.

Amina Srna: Queens Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani took home the largest haul from the CFB, $4 million. My eyes breezed over that in the intro a little bit, but $4 million, to be clear. How will that money impact his campaign?

Brigid Bergin: Before this payment was even made, we reported exclusively that the Mamdani campaign had maxed out the amount of money that they could raise and spend for the primary. Again, the New York City Campaign Finance Board's public matching program is really supposed to be an equalizing force, so that they have caps about how much money you can spend for the primary election and how much you can spend for the general election. You can spend $8 million for the primary.

The campaign had decided two weeks ago, before they even knew how much money they were going to get paid, before they knew whether they were going to have a snafu like the Cuomo campaign. That they were going to suspend fundraising until after the primary, which is a pretty audacious move on their part. They made this decision because they were so confident, because they had so many donors. They have somewhere in the neighborhood of like 18,000 individual contributions.

They were very confident that they had the money to go ahead. What that money will be enable them to do is, I think pretty soon we're going to start to see Mamdani on platforms. We haven't seen him yet. We know he's got this viral social campaigning ability. He is getting a lot of earned media. We're talking about him right now, but we haven't seen him up with a broadcast commercial, unlike the Cuomo campaign, which has not paid for a commercial themselves.

They are getting some independent expenditure support, which has allowed them to be out there in places where Mamdani hasn't been yet. I think we might start to see him popping up in some new places. Certainly, they're leaning in really hard to their volunteer campaign. I even saw yesterday that they were advertising for a Spanish language press secretary, which speaks to their ability to go after votes who may be not voters that are used to having candidates speak to them in their language. Lots of interesting stuff to watch there.

Amina Srna: Brigid, Cuomo's own campaign hasn't come out with a commercial, but his PAC has, right?

Brigid Bergin: Exactly.

Amina Srna: Super PAC has.

Brigid Bergin: Exactly.

Amina Srna: I'm told that they're spending like half a million dollars a week on that TV advertising.

Brigid Bergin: Well, Mamdani's been extremely successful at fundraising. A recent AARPOL conducted by Siena College Research Institute found that he's still trailing Cuomo. The former governor came away with 34% of first-round votes, while Mamdani holds 16%. Liz, why hasn't fundraising success translated into higher poll numbers?

Elizabeth Kim: Well, I think it's still early, and I think it's about whether you see the glass half full or half empty. I went back and I tried to look at one of the late polls from 2021. This was like in the final week of the election, and Adams was at 24 and Garcia was at 17. That's the final week. At that point, they were seeing Adams's lead was narrowing. As we all know, Kathryn Garcia finished a close second. She was within 8,000 votes of beating Eric Adams as mayor. I think it's a combination of, we still have time. Cuomo, of course, is a lot higher than that 24. He's in the 30s.

He has a bigger lead against Mamdani. Keep in mind, I think a lot could still happen. I keep going back to this, but it was around mid-May that the race really started to crystallize. It was because of an incident that happened. It was that shooting in Times Square. That was when public safety emerged as the defense defining issue of the race. That's when we saw the race really clarify and people start looking deeper into these two candidates, Eric Adams and Kathryn Garcia, who were the two moderates along with Andrew Yang.

Amina Srna: Liz, you took to the streets of Sunnyside, Queens, to speak with voters. Before I play our first clip, what's so special about the residents of Sunnyside?

Elizabeth Kim: Well, this is a neighborhood in Western Queens that went for Maya Wiley in 2021. Maya Wiley was the progressive candidate in that race. She finished third, although I will point out it was a close third. She and Kathryn Garcia were in striking distance of beating Eric Adams. I think it's very interesting to see where is this neighborhood four years later, a neighborhood that was more left-leaning. Is it the clip you're going to play of Amanda Lefer?

Amina Srna: Yes, that's right.

Elizabeth Kim: Okay. Amanda Lefer works at a nonprofit. She's very politically engaged. She is what you would call a high information voter, which Brigid is an outlier, right?

Brigid Bergin: Yes. To your point, like we have this time between now and June, when voters are going to start to shift in a lot of ways. To talk to someone now and have them have such a clear perspective this is someone who's going to bring people to the polls with her.

Elizabeth Kim: Exactly. This is someone who will be an influencer in her neighborhood. A person like this matters.

Amina Srna: Let's take a listen to Amanda Lefer.

Amanda Lefer: I love his politics. He's obviously very left of center for a Democrat. He is a Democrat socialist. I agree with a lot of his policy platforms, freezing rent. I think he speaks to a lot of the regular citizens in New York City that are struggling to make ends meet. I'm very privileged, but even I live paycheck to paycheck, and it's hard. It's really hard right now.

Elizabeth Kim: She's speaking about Zoram Mamdani, and that speaks to the grassroots fervor. Also, the effectiveness of his campaigning and focus on affordability, because that's what she's zeroed in on.

Amina Srna: Before this clip, Lizzie, you were telling us about Maya Wiley being within striking distance of Eric Adams. Is Mamdani the Maya Wiley of this election cycle?

Elizabeth Kim: He is to the left of Maya Wiley. I guess your question there is she was the candidate that ultimately progressives coalesced around. That's the question that's still out there right now among the progressives. Will Mamdani be the progressive that the left coalesces around? Will it be maybe a Brad Lander? Adrienne Adams doesn't have as much money, but she's also under consideration, and she's more of a moderate. These are still outstanding questions, and I think we'll see them answered in the weeks to come as the left digs in and tries to really drill down on a strategy of how they can win this race.

Amina Srna: Listeners, for the last few weeks, we've asked you to call in and share who you've decided to back in the mayoral race this year. We'll do the same now. Have you figured out who you're ranking first, second or third in the Democratic primary coming up this June? If you voted for Kathryn Garcia or Maya Wiley in 2021, who are you ranking first this time around? We'll also take your questions for our reporters, Liz and Brigid. Call us now at 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692. Up next, we have a clip of your conversation with a resident named Rachel Reichman.

Elizabeth Kim: I'd just like to ask you just what you think of the candidates so far.

Rachel Reichman: You know what, I'm embarrassed. I don't feel like I have a full grasp of the candidates yet. I need to dig in. I know. I'm sorry, I'm not being helpful for you.

Elizabeth Kim: No, that's it. That by itself tells me something. You just don't know who they are.

Rachel: Well, I've had my fill of Cuomo.

Amina Srna: I've had my fill of Cuomo. She said there at the end. Liz, how many voters are like Rachel right now? We've talked about high-information voters. Is there still a large segment of New Yorkers who are undecided, you think?

Elizabeth Kim: I thought Rachel's response, and by the way, Rachel told me that she is a very loyal WNYC listener, but I think that her response is typical. Right, Brigid? I think there are a lot of voters out there who are still not tuned into this race. There are a lot of candidates. There are nine Democrats running in the primary. You heard what her footnote was, right? The one candidate that she has heard of in the race is Andrew Cuomo, who has the broadest name recognition but is also someone that she has already decided that she's not putting on her ballot.

Brigid Bergin: I think just going back to what we were talking about with the latest poll that came out from the Siena College Research Institute, that's the one we just saw this week. 20% of voters sampled in that particular poll, which I would note was a relatively small sample size. It was about 560 registered Democrats. 20% of those folks said they didn't know who their first choice was. That's not an insignificant number of voters that could move to any candidate.

Also, interestingly besides Cuomo and Mamdani, the rest of the field was all polling in single digits. You understand why people don't necessarily have a candidate they're talking about other than the names we've already talked about, because those people don't seem to be breaking through yet.

Amina Srna: Listeners, who are you thinking about as your first choice or second, or third, we can take your calls as our phone lines are filling up. 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692. The New York Times reported early this morning that a group of Brooklyn Democrats have band together to endorse Cuomo opponents. Brigid or Liz, whoever wants to take this, who are the elected officials coming forward to oppose Cuomo, and who did they endorse instead?

Brigid Bergin: The Times is reporting that a group of Brooklyn Democrats led by Congresswoman Nydia Velázquez and Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, Assemblymember Emily Gallagher, and several other folks are going to be coming out to support a slate of candidates. Three candidates, specifically Brad Lander, Adrienne Adams, and Zohran Mamdani. I think what's interesting about that, yes, it doesn't hurt those candidates in any way to have that support.

I think it is a more devastating blow to the candidates whose names I did not mention, specifically Brooklyn State Senator Zellnor Myrie and Queen State Senator Jessica Ramos. Myrie probably more even so than Ramos because he's hometown Brooklyn guy. For him to not be getting support from some of the elected officials right there in his own borough that's not good for the future of his campaign. There are certain endorsements in this race, as Liz wrote about recently, that will probably carry more weight than others.

The heavyweight in all of this is, of course, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who she is mentioned in that story as someone who has spoken out against Cuomo. It is unclear when and if she plans to weigh in on this primary. As we saw in 2021, her decision could have some serious impact. She ended up endorsing Maya Wiley in the 2021 race. That certainly boosted Maya Wiley's candidacy. As we've talked about, she came in third, close third, but it wasn't enough to put her over the edge.

I think there are a lot of considerations here over the timing of these kinds of endorsements and what effect it has on influencing other candidates to start thinking about the degree to which they need to start co-endorsing the degree to which they need to start teaming up. It's something that, again, we saw in 2021, but we just didn't see it until later in the cycle.

Amina Srna: Let's go to Jim in Flatbush. Hi, Jim, you're on WNYC.

Jim: Hi, thanks for taking my call.

Amina Srna: Thanks for calling in. What's your ranking?

Jim: Right now, I have Zohran on top, then Adrienne Adams, and then probably Zellnor. I haven't made up my mind about the last two exactly. I had been thinking about Brad Lander, but I was at one of the mayoral forums where he was interrupted by climate activists. Then I read their pamphlet and I changed my mind. I just don't think we can have somebody in office that isn't going to be able to stand up to power. I think at this critical moment, we need real leadership in office.

Amina Srna: Jim, thank you so much for your call. To either one of you, it sounds like he's ranking towards more progressive policies. Do you want to weigh in on the endorsements and whether those are going to matter?

Elizabeth Kim: Well, I would say that Jim is also a high information voter because if you're someone who's tuned into a mayoral forum in April, I think in that sense he's kind of atypical. He didn't comment on what he thought of Cuomo and whether or not he would put him on his ballot. For the progressives, their strategy is banking on people leaving Cuomo off. We were talking before about the endorsements.

I have to think that it's not an accident that this endorsement announcement led by Nydia Velázquez is coming out on the same week that Cuomo got the 32BJ and Hotel Trades Union endorsements. Two very, very important labor groups who are coming out and supporting him. He already has a lot of backing from labor. What I am watching to see is unlike with Cuomo, when he gets an endorsement, they are just endorsing Cuomo.

With the progressives, you have a situation now where they're coming out and they're saying, "We want you to vote for these three candidates." They're not telling voters which of these they should rank first. I wonder if that's enough in voters' minds. Is that enough? Okay, you're letting me decide on these three candidates. Do voters at some point need to know that, well, we would like you to rank this person first? I'm just curious as to whether eventually progressives are going to get there.

Brigid Bergin: I think the other piece of that is also this notion that if you are endorsing a slate of three, that there is still two open slots on a ballot.

Elizabeth Kim: Excellent point. Yes.

Brigid Bergin: Given all the polling that we have seen in the ranked choice scenarios, Cuomo still rises to the top because people who may have another candidate who they're supporting first are still in these polling scenarios putting him on their ballot. It's a question for these groups if they're fully understanding the ranked choice ballot and the scenario there. It's, I think, a very positive sign for the Cuomo campaign that in these scenarios, he's still rising to the top.

Elizabeth Kim: Yes. That Siena Poll in fact found that there were Brad Lander and Adrienne Adams voters, I think, who did have Cuomo on their ballot. That is bad news for the progressives.

Amina Srna: Oh, we got so many calls coming in. First a text. We've been talking about ranking one listener text, "I'm voting for Mamdani and that's it. Unless another candidate comes up who's comparable or better. Otherwise, I'm not rank voting candidates that I feel meh about. One vote only."

Brigid Bergin: I have to say like longtime listener here to The Brian Lehrer Show. Last week, I was listening to my colleague Elizabeth Kim, just very deftly answer a question from a caller related to this very issue. This idea of ranking what do you do if you only like one candidate? Do you rank just one candidate? I think to that texture, to that previous caller we'll just underscore the point that there's nothing that makes your ballot stronger by only choosing one candidate. The strategy here, and the opportunity, one would argue, is that by filling out the ballot completely, your vote is going further.

If for some reason you vote for a candidate who doesn't make it out of the first round, well, then your vote is expired and it's exhausted is the term, and will not be part of that final count. That if you can bring yourself to look at the candidates and figure out who you can live with and then rank those candidates so that you fill out your full ballot, your vote will go that much further.

Amina Srna: It's great advice. I've been definitely hearing a lot of questions about that from listeners. Please.

Elizabeth Kim: What the texter should think about is, let's say Mamdani gets knocked out, and then the texter should think about a scenario in which it is against Cuomo, maybe Lander, maybe Adrienne Adams. Of those choices, which would this voter prefer? Because if he leaves the rest of his ballot blank, he's basically opting out of having a say in that decision. Maybe he doesn't really like any of the other candidates, but which is the one he can live with? That's the question.

Amina Srna: Let's go to another call. Christine in Brooklyn Heights. Hi, Christine. You're on WNYC.

Christine: Hi. Thank you so much for taking my call, and thank you all for all the work that you do. I went to a Brad Lander town hall yesterday in the neighborhood, and he's my choice. Actually, if I could just say right off, can I vote for him in all the slots? Can I rank him 1 through 5?

Brigid Bergin: There is really no benefit to doing that, because the way they tally these votes, if Brad Lander is still alive through the final round of tallying, well, your vote would then count just in that first rank. There's no incentive, and there's no reason. It doesn't help your vote go further to rank him more than once. His name will count on your ballot the one time you put him down.

Amina Srna: Let's go to another call. Marvin in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Marvin.

Marvin: Hi. Thank you very much for taking my call. I want to say a number of things about Cuomo and also contrast him with Brad Lander. Cuomo doesn't care about the city. He's professed his love for the city since he wanted to run for mayor, but he never chose to live here as an adult. Brad Lander came here from St. Louis, raised his family, and sent them to public schools, and has been involved in creating affordable housing throughout his professional career.

Cuomo was the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under the Clinton administration. The last administration actually have a budget surplus, but yet in that position, he eliminated more than 50,000 units of public housing across the country and did nothing to help NYCHA. Nor did he do much to help NYCHA when he was governor. All his major infrastructure projects that he brags about have nothing to do with creating housing.

He tops it off, finally coming out with some plan, which in part is generated by ChatGPT, whatever its initials are, which again shows that this is not a priority for him. Cuomo also is the many Trump. A lot of politicians who wanted him to leave office because of his sexual predatory nature are now flocking because they're afraid of his anger if he gets back into a position in power. We have one sexual abuser in the White House. We don't need another in Gracie Mansion, especially when there's a decent, highly qualified, and skilled person like Brad Lander to be our next governor.

Amina Srna: Thank you so much for your call. Let me get a response for you there. Couple of things in there. I don't know where you want to start. Do we want to start on the ChatGPT housing plan as Marvin began his original comment, Liz? Hell Gate reported that Cuomo likely used ChatGPT to write up his housing plan. How did they figure that out? How do we know?

Elizabeth Kim: The campaign has acknowledged that they did use ChatGPT. The way they found out, and this is very interesting, is that within the housing plan itself, there were footnotes. At one point, they footnoted an article written by our own David Brand. The footnote was the link to the story. The link itself contained the words ChatGPT. It was the URL. I guess when you're using ChatGPT and you're using it to research and find articles, it will generate a URL, but it will also add into that URL that it was found through ChatGPT.

Brigid Bergin: Bravo, bravo.

Elizabeth Kim: That was eagle eyes to Hell Gate for noticing that and then getting the campaign to say yes. I think that Marvin's comment is very interesting because he remembers that Andrew Cuomo was once the HUD secretary which would speak to you would think, expertise in housing. Even before the ChatGPT scandal came out, if you can call it a scandal. What was interesting to me was that he chose to release that plan. I think I even texted you, Brigid, like on a Sunday.

We all know the city has a housing crisis, has an affordable housing crisis. The fact that he would issue a plan, and this is an area against-- this is the former HUD secretary issuing a housing plan on a Sunday. He's not taking questions from the press on this plan. Whether you like the plan or don't like the plan, the fact that a so-called expert on housing would release a plan on a weekend and also not take some deeper questions from the press corps on it, I think is telling.

Brigid Bergin: I think we've seen consistently throughout the campaign so far. They're running a much different campaign than other candidates because they are doing a lot of their policy releases on paper. He is not putting himself in positions to take a series of unfiltered questions from reporters. I think there have been only a handful of actual Q&As. Also, on top of the one incident of ChatGPT in the housing plan, Politico then reported yesterday that they could find evidence of ChatGPT in two other policy proposals related to public safety.

Which is really at the center of how Cuomo is trying to run this campaign, talking about how the city is in crisis. These are his ways of addressing those crises. He wants to address it through managerial competence and through experience. It doesn't bode well. It is unclear if these types of errors using ChatGPT, releasing a statement about major endorsements from unions, with typos in the union leaders' names. If these types of mistakes, which the campaign will admit these are staff mistakes. These are not necessarily his mistakes.

Other candidates are running campaigns where these things are not happening. They are taking the incoming from the press, which generally comes with running for office, because we are not doing it just because of our own curiosity. We are asking these questions on for voters and for the public because we have the ability. That's our job. We are trying to act as a surrogate and to make sure that people understand where these candidates stand on these issues. When you're not making yourself available to us, you're not making yourself available to voters.

Amina Srna: As we run out of time, Brigid, I wanted to ask you. While Cuomo did not receive money from the CFB, Politico reported that a super PAC backing him got $250,000 donation from MAGA billionaire Bill Ackman. You've been looking into questions about Cuomo and Donald Trump's relationship. Why might voters care about this donation, and does it show that Trump might approve of a Mayor Cuomo?

Brigid Bergin: I don't know if I would go that far. What it shows is that there are people who have supported President Trump that are now also supporting former Governor Andrew Cuomo for mayor. In this case, Bill Ackman, who's very outspoken. A $250,000 donation to an independent expenditure group fixed the city. That group right now, I think has close to $5 million, which means that even though the campaign itself didn't receive those public matching funds, that a group that is supporting them will be able to get the message they think he represents out.

Since, of course, the campaign and an independent expenditure group should not and I'm sure are not coordinating in any way. They would just be talking about his candidacy in the experience that he brings. Talking about some of those major infrastructure projects that Marvin mentioned that know are not related to housing, but are things that you can see and feel around New York City, Moynihan Station, the Second Avenue subway.

They want to point to his ability to get big projects done. I think what you will hear conversely from the field that is trying to run against him, because that's really how it feels right now. It's like Cuomo and the rest are all the ways that the city runs differently. Is he bringing an understanding of those differences to this campaign and potentially to City Hall?

Amina Srna: That is where we'll have to leave this for now. Suddenly, June seems right around the corner. My guests have been Elizabeth Kim, Gothamist and WNYC reporter, and Brigid Bergin, WNYC's senior political correspondent. Thank you so much.

Elizabeth Kim: Thanks, Amina.

Brigid Bergin: Thanks.

 

 

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