[MUSIC - The Brian Lehrer Show Intro]
Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now it's time for our weekly Wednesday visit from WNYC Political Reporter Elizabeth Kim on the New York City mayoral race. Today's appearance comes as the two televised debates are coming in the race. One will be next Wednesday, which I'll be one of the questioners in, on WNYC and New York 1. The first debate is tomorrow night on Channel 4. Liz has a newsletter coming out this afternoon on Five Things To Watch For In The First Debate. Let's see what kind of viewer's guide she's got. Hi, Liz. Thanks for this, as always, and happy Wednesday.
Elizabeth Kim: Happy Wednesday, Brian.
Brian: As our listeners know, we emphasize issues here, not the constant polls. We'll have one of our 30 Issues in 30 Days election series segments coming up later in the show. For the candidates, you remind us that their debate strategies are very much tied to where the polls stand. Want to give us a brief thumbnail of where they are?
Elizabeth: Sure. I'll just summarize a Quinnipiac poll that came out this month, and it shows that Mamdani still has a double-digit lead. He's at 46% support from likely voters, and that's compared to 33% for Cuomo and 15% for Sliwa.
Brian: Your first thing to watch for tomorrow night is headlined, "Now or Never for Cuomo," and you note a narrow path, but also a few signs of momentum. Want to talk about each?
Elizabeth: Sure. Cuomo has very much tried to portray this as a two-man race, and he does have that argument because he is in second place, and you can argue that he does have some decent momentum because he managed to shrink Mamdani's lead from 13 points in August to 22 points in September. The former Governor also got a fundraising boost after Mayor Adams dropped out of the race. He raised nearly $400,000, and that's nearly half of the total $900,000 that he has raised since late August.
Brian: You say Cuomo has become more combative recently and started to lean more on wedge issues. Wedge issues like what?
Elizabeth: They're issues like education; he has come out in support of charter schools. Mamdani has said that he opposes the expansion of charter schools and, in fact, he would like more scrutiny of charter schools. Cuomo has said that he wants to look at all of the underperforming schools in New York City, and that if it's not performing well, he wants to leave it up to the community to decide what kind of school they would like in its place. That opens the door for charter schools. Another issue, which came out recently, is the Gifted and Talented Program. Now, this actually came out of a New York Times questionnaire that was put to all the candidates, and Mamdani said in the questionnaire that he would cancel Gifted and Talented for younger students, specifically kindergarteners. Immediately after that, both Cuomo and Sliwa seized on that issue, and they said, not only would they not do something like that, they would expand the Gifted and Talented Program, and they would also add more specialized high schools as well.
Another issue that Cuomo seized on recently, just last week, is he says that he is going to cancel the city's plan to close Rikers. Now, I want to point out that plan, which was passed into law by the City Council, is already in motion, but Cuomo is saying that he would stop the construction of the four new borough-based jails that are supposed to replace Rikers. He would put affordable housing in their place, and he would build a new jail complex on Rikers. Now, why is he doing that? Because the plan to build the borough-based jails has faced opposition from people who live in those neighborhoods.
Brian: You describe your second thing to watch for in tomorrow night's debate as Trump is the opponent Mamdani wants, but, Liz, Trump isn't a candidate in this race, you may have noticed. How is Mamdani trying to make Trump the most relevant to voters' decisions for mayor?
Elizabeth: Brian, we've seen, since the primary, that all of the candidates have been trying to project themselves as the person who would best be able to stand up to Donald Trump, and that includes Sliwa, too, because he's not a MAGA candidate, and he's made that very clear. Most recently, what Mamdani has benefited from is the Trump Administration's indictment of Attorney General Letitia James. Now, this indictment on charges of mortgage fraud happened last week, and Mamdani didn't waste any time in rallying behind Letitia James.
Now, she is the first Black woman elected to statewide office in New York; she is broadly popular among Democrats, particularly in Brooklyn, and what he did was he had a planned rally on Monday, and he let, basically, Letitia James headline that rally. They stood side by side, and he used this moment to project unity between the two of them. I should also note that he also held a press conference. He joined, I should say, Governor Kathy Hochul at her press conference yesterday, another show of unity with a Democrat who's facing a potential reelection challenge from a Republican, Elise Stefanik.
This is a moment where he can join other high-profile Democrats in basically saying that they are willing to stand up to Trump. The President has wasted no time in attacking Mamdani as the frontrunner, and the President himself has even said that he expects Mamdani to win the race.
Brian: In fact, if Mamdani is trying to make Trump his opponent in the narrative, Trump may have either helped Mamdani out in this respect yesterday, or hurt him, I'm not sure which, by threatening to withhold more federal funding from New York City if Mamdani is elected than if any other candidate wins. Here's 15 seconds of that.
President Donald J. Trump: I wouldn't be generous to a communist, a guy that's going to take the money and throw it out the window because you're talking about hundreds of billions of dollars. We're not going to let somebody get into office and squander taxpayer money from this country. We're not going to let it happen.
Brian: Do you see that specific threat to federal government services for New York City as likely to be a debating point tomorrow night?
Elizabeth: This is where it gets tricky, Brian. No candidate wants to find themselves aligned with Trump by saying that he or she would be the candidate that Trump would somehow favor and, somehow, give special treatment. Just look at Eric Adams, where Adams is right now, but I think there is a way for perhaps Curtis Sliwa and Andrew Cuomo to possibly thread the needle and say that they would be better able to maybe talk Trump down. That is something that Cuomo has tried to do by emphasizing that he knows Donald Trump, he's talked to Donald Trump, he negotiated with Donald Trump during the pandemic over PPE protective equipment like masks, right?
He can point to that as perhaps a way that he can better handle Donald Trump and the White House.
Brian: Your third question for tomorrow night's debate: which Sliwa shows up? Liz, how many Curtis Sliwas are there?
Elizabeth: There's this Curtis Sliwa that we saw in 2021, who took the debate stage against Eric Adams, and that was quite a theatrical Curtis Sliwa. That's the Curtis Sliwa I think most New Yorkers recognize. He wore the red beret, and he basically spent most of that debate taunting and insulting Eric Adams.
What I think is interesting is that for this general election campaign, Curtis Sliwa has tried on a more serious look, meaning that he has worn a suit and tie, and he's also campaigned without the beret. In fact, he has told the public that if he is elected, he would keep the beret off, and it's also translated into more in-depth policy discussions, right? Like, we talked about last week, how he said he would cut $10 billion from the education budget, meaning that he'd target bureaucratic bloat. He's also offering a subway rebate for commuters.
I think what is interesting is, Curtis Sliwa is someone who is not shy when given the spotlight. He has been a television pundit before, but does he rein it in a little bit? Does he decide, first of all, not to wear the red beret and try to convince skeptics, perhaps, who think of him as unserious, that he, in fact, does have the gravitas to be in charge of City Hall?
Brian: Which brings us to your thing number four out of your five things to watch for in tomorrow night's debate. As we run out of time, this will be the last one we do here. Listeners, you'll just have to sign up for Liz's newsletter if you want to see what thing five is. Number four, could Cuomo and Sliwa forge an alliance? How could they do that? Why would they do that if they're each hoping to be the winning alternative to Mamdani? Interestingly, you wrote that some Mamdani voters might relish a team-up between his two rivals. You want to lay that out for us?
Elizabeth: It's actually anti-Mamdani voters because amongst Sliwa voters, I think some of them are really torn about what to do because, look, they're watching the polls and they're trying to see who is the most viable challenger to Zohran Mamdani. Again, these are anti-Mamdani voters. These are the "anyone-but-Mamdani" voters, right? I think it's a choice for Sliwa. He has spent a lot of time-- and you and I, Brian, have pointed this out, he has spent a lot of time attacking Cuomo.
In fact, I think you can look at it, and he's probably spent more time attacking Cuomo than he has Mamdani. Now, what does he choose to do in this debate? Obviously, he does see Cuomo, and he said this; he believes Cuomo is trying to steal some of his conservative and Republican voters. At the same time, the debate stage, to have three of them there, does offer Sliwa an opportunity to do a team-up. There are positions on which they are aligned in terms of public safety, for example, that they could choose to attack Mamdani. The question is, does Sliwa choose to do it?
Brian: Liz, thanks for your coverage, as always. Thanks for coming on with us every Wednesday through the election. Talk to you next week.
Elizabeth: Thanks, Brian.
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