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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now, as usual, on Wednesdays, our lead Eric Adams reporter, Elizabeth Kim, after the mayor's weekly Tuesday news conference, she's here again with clips and analysis and to take your calls, 212-433-WNYC.

It got pretty lively yesterday with the mayor. Some of the reporters' questions, topics included the resignation of the first female FDNY Commissioner, Laura Kavanagh, Mayor Adams' response to the assassination attempt against former president, Trump, and who he thinks needs to tone down politically intense rhetoric, and an early look at the 2025 mayoral primary, with three Democrats now officially in that race, or at least filing campaign finance reports for that race. Liz, hi. Happy Wednesday.

Elizabeth Kim: Happy Wednesday, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: We'll start off with the resignation of Laura Kavanagh, the FDNY Commissioner. You asked the mayor about this, and we're going to play part of your question. Should I just play it, or do you want to set this up in any way?

Elizabeth Kim: Sure. I'll set it up. Just to remind listeners, Laura Kavanagh, she was appointed in October, 2022. She was the first woman to lead the department. She was also the youngest in over a century. Now, she herself was not a firefighter, but she had years of experience going back to 2014. She was the acting commissioner to Dan Nigro, who retired in 2022. Prior to that, she was the first deputy commissioner, so very much a trailblazing appointment.

Brian Lehrer: Here's part of Liz's question, folks, and we'll hear part of the mayor's response.

Elizabeth Kim: She tried to have some shakeups in the department and she got backlash for it. It was a lawsuit. I remember you defended her at the time in making those decisions. Then one of the arguments that was made against her by members of the fire department was that she herself had never been a firefighter. I'm wondering, how much credence do you give to that argument? Is that a legitimate argument to make against her? How much do you think the underlying reason was also the fact that she was a woman?

Brian Lehrer: Here's part of the mayor's response. This runs about a minute and 20.

Mayor Adams: Well, first of all, we had other fire commissioners that were never firefighters, and I never heard that.

Elizabeth Kim: We've got sexism?

Mayor Adams: No, you could write the story the way you want. I'm only answering the question. Whenever you stand up and point out the obvious and push back on institutional stuff, you're going to get a backlash. I'm still paying for the fact that I told you guys you don't have enough diversity in the media. I'm still paying for that. Don't think I don't know that.

When you're taking leadership positions like she did, these institutions are tough. She went into an institution that historically didn't even have women in there, didn't even have diversity in there. She went in. I remember sitting down with her when she made the decision. I said, "This is going to be tough. It's going to be very tough." She says, "Eric, I'm up for it." She showed that. The numbers of women have increased of these things that she has done. Really, now we don't have to worry about if a woman wants to become a commissioner.

I don't believe that it should be that, "Hey, you've never been a firefighter before." The people get many positions that they've never been. I've never been a mayor before, but we're running the heck out of this city, aren't we?

Brian Lehrer: There's a lot in there, Liz. There's the issue of her never having been a firefighter before. There's the question about sexism. There's the question about how she tried to shake things up in the department. Let me ask you first how you interpret the mayor's answer to your premise that the male dominant culture- or at least the premise of your question was just a question, that the male dominant culture of the FDNY factored into Kavanagh's decision to leave.

Elizabeth Kim: It's a little confusing. I followed up another reporter who first asked about whether sexism had contributed to her departure, and the mayor was very defensive about that. He said that the question, the premise by itself, that a woman was leaving because of sexism, that by itself was sexist. I think the mayor is constantly trying to push back on this idea that these male-dominated agencies-- and I'll remind listeners, less than 2% of the fire department is made up of women. That's very, very small. It's his historically been that way.

He's constantly pushing back on this idea that that's the reason why someone like Laura Kavanagh left. It's similar. There are echoes here of Keechant Sewell. Keechant Sewell was the first woman police commissioner, and she left last year, or she lasted about a year and a half into the role. It's interesting. They both lasted roughly a year and a half into their roles.

At the same time, you listen to what the mayor's saying, and he does seem to acknowledge that to go into a department that is male-dominated, that has a certain entrenched culture, that it was hard. That he even said to Laura Kavanagh, "Are you ready for this?" I think you can take the mayor's response as you want, but I felt like it was a little confusing. I think that he does not want it to be reported that the two women that he appointed, these are very high-profile public safety roles, that they somehow couldn't survive because of sexism.

I think the insinuation there or the question there is always-- he made these great, historic appointments. It's true, he's the first mayor to have five women deputy mayors in his administration, but the question though is, are they empowered? Do they get support from City Hall if they make difficult or controversial decisions? It's that part of the question that the mayor does not want to take blame for. That's why he pushes back on this question as to, what kind of role does sexism play in it? Because then it becomes, did you do enough to help them and to combat that institutional sexism?

Brian Lehrer: Well, did the mayor himself have a hand in pushing out either Police Commissioner Sewell or Fire Commissioner Kavanagh?

Elizabeth Kim: There is no evidence of that. When Sewell left, there were reports that she did not feel like she had the power to make her own decisions, and appointments, and hirings. She alluded to some of the challenges of being a woman in the police department in a speech she gave to women police officers. With Kavanagh, it's much less clear. She did release a very lengthy statement on medium, in which she talked about her 10 years in the fire department and what it was like. It's a challenging job, whether you're a woman or a man. There's nothing that she says that can directly be said that she left it because she felt there was a conspiracy of men trying to thwart her or undermine her.

Brian Lehrer: Yet weren't there mostly men below her in the power structure of the FDNY who were challenging her and trying to thwart her? There were these shakeups that Commissioner Kavanagh was trying to implement that caused such a backlash within the department, right?

Elizabeth Kim: There was. Shortly after she was appointed Fire Commissioner, she demoted several top fire chiefs, and that faced a very bitter backlash. Those men said that it was retaliation for them expressing safety concerns, and they sued her and the department. There was then a separate lawsuit, where a group of former fire chiefs accused her of age discrimination.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, anybody out there who's a firefighter or a former firefighter or comes from a family of firefighters, 212-433-WNYC, with an observation or a question about the departure of Laura Kavanagh, 212-433-9692. As we invite those calls and any calls for Liz Kim on anything that the mayor addressed at his Tuesday news conference, let's move on to another topic that was covered at the press conference this week, Mayor Adams' reaction to the assassination attempt against former president, Trump.

Adams isn't necessarily a part of either team Biden or team Trump all that much. He feels a bit removed from the situation, even though he certainly, as a Democrat, is endorsing Biden, but he's had a few days to process this between the assassination attempt and the news conference on Tuesday. Here's 40 seconds of his response to the situation. Actually, I'm not going to play this yet because Liz, I want you to set this up. What was his response to the situation basically?

Elizabeth Kim: On Sunday what he did was he held a press conference at City Hall with Reverend Al Sharpton and other faith leaders, and also the Republican Council Member Joe Borelli. What they did was they condemned political violence, they condemned gun violence. The mayor is saying what a lot of other elected officials are saying, is we need to bring down the temperature, but he also brought up another one of his favorite targets, which is the press.

Brian Lehrer: Here's that.

Mayor Adams: You guys cover it so you know how bad it is. You want to deny it, but you all know if it bleeds, it leads. You know that. "We're not going to cover, Eric, what you've done, have bring more jobs in this history of the city. That's all great. No, we want to cover this," because we have all been sensationalized by, "How many clicks can I get?" We know it, so stop acting like we don't know it. How do I make this story as horrific as possible so that-- We now have been desensitized to get as many clicks as possible. We've all contributed to this atmosphere.

Brian Lehrer: We wouldn't say anything specific about Democratic or Republican politicians?

Elizabeth Kim: No. He pivoted to the press contributing to how divisive the atmosphere has become. I think that was an interesting pivot, to us sitting there and watching him. Although it's not a secret, people in power, they're always unhappy with their coverage, and this mayor is no different. He complains about it often. He and his supporters have talked about part of the reason they feel is racism. He's only the second Black mayor in the city. In that clip though, he's talking about the sensational leanings of the press corps.

Here's the reality, the coverage of this mayor is not harder or tougher than that of, for example, his predecessor. He's a moderate Democrat, and he's not nearly targeted as much by the New York Post as Mayor Bill de Blasio was.

The other thing to point out is, the mayor is not owning up to his own "sensationalized remarks." I'll just give listeners two examples that they'll probably remember. When the mayor first came into office, he talked a lot about crime. He made this statement that he had never witnessed crime at this level. The mayor is a police officer. Now, the number of murders roughly hovers between 400 to 500. When the mayor was a police officer, it was over 2,000 murders in 1990. That drew a lot of eyebrows and it got a lot of headlines.

Another example is his rhetoric around the migrant crisis. We've talked about this and how he got a lot of press for saying that the migrant crisis is "destroying this city."

Brian Lehrer: Right. We just had a Republican member of Congress on earlier in the hour from the Republican National Convention who cited that quote in defending Republican policies. With respect to the board. He said, "Mayor Adams said migrants are destroying the city."

Elizabeth Kim: Right. I would say to the mayor, yes. The press is often accused in criticizing for sensationalizing the news, but the mayor himself, I think, is a source of those sensationalized or alarmist kind of statements?

Brian Lehrer: A few reactions coming into the Laura Kavanagh resignation. Listener texts, "Ask any woman who has worked at a big city fire department and they will tell story after story about the entrenched sexism, verging on vitriolic misogyny and overt hostility." "There's an institutional culture that is very deeply sexist," writes one listener. I think we're going to get a different take in distinguishing the Police Commissioner Sewell situation from the Fire Commissioner Kavanaugh situation from Danny in Massapequa, former NYPD, who's calling in. Danny, you're on WNYC. Hi.

Danny: Hey, Brian. Good morning. Can you hear me okay?

Brian Lehrer: Yes. We got you.

Danny: Yes. I wish I could talk about the assassination, but there's a complete different dynamic that goes on in the police department and the fire department. First of all, Commissioner Sewell was very loved and respected by the rank and file. She had come from Nassau County with a very stellar reputation for being a cop's cop and a good street cop. She worked her way up the chain of command. Every promotion in the police department after captain is political.

In the fire department, they do not have that. They have civil service test right up to the chief of department, which means you have to earn that test to go and-- In the fire department, she tried to overturn all of those things. If you're going to be a chief and show up at the scene with a hundred men running through a building fighting a fire, which is something we can all, very easily, see the danger of that you better have, damn well, earned that right by going up the rank and passing all these tests and being at each level.

The police department, you can make [unintelligible 00:16:37] detective, because they're not really in operational roles, they're in supervisory roles, so it's two separate reasons.

She was very unhappy with the rank and file in the fire department because she was going to overturn a merit-based system, which people are counting on with their very lives, and that's all I'm going to say.

She tried to overturn that. She's inviting the attorney general to speak at a thing that's being held in the church. The fire department never was about that. They had their ceremony in the fire headquarters. She's a political person and she tried to make it political and that's why she's no longer the fire commissioner. There were lives at stake here. This isn't a game.

Brian Lehrer: Danny, thank you. Thank you for chiming in. Well, what about that allegation from the caller that she was trying to politicize what has been a merit-based promotion system? Have you heard that before?

Elizabeth Kim: I don't know about that, but I think that Danny makes an important point on the difference between her situation and Sewell's. Is that, yes, Sewell was largely-- it was reported that she was very popular among the rank and file. When it comes to Sewell, the issue of sexism and maybe not receiving enough support comes not from within the police department. It was more of an accusation at City Hall that she was not being empowered by the mayor to run the department.

With Kavanaugh, and I said this to the mayor, at the time when she demoted those chiefs, the mayor backed her up actually. We didn't see that dynamic there. He backed her up and he said, "Listen, she's trying to make some difficult decisions and not everyone is going to be happy." With her, it is a question of internally, was her obstacles and challenges internal within the agency? I think it still opens up the question, was there some kind of intervention that maybe the mayor could have done?

Brian Lehrer: All right. Next topic. Now, We'll take a look at a moment when the mayor really lost his cool at the news conference yesterday, and I'm paraphrasing. Yesterday a reporter asked Mayor Adams what Brianna Suggs' role is in his upcoming reelection campaign and why she's on his payroll, despite not having a title visible to the public. Before we play the clip of the mayor, can you remind listeners who Brianna Suggs is?

Elizabeth Kim: Sure. Brianna Suggs was the mayor's top fundraiser for his campaign. What happened was in November, she was among those who had their homes raided by the FBI, but it was the raid on her Brooklyn home that broke into view this ongoing federal public corruption investigation into Mayor Adams' 2021 campaign. Now, neither he nor Brianna nor anyone else whose homes have been raided, have been accused of any wrongdoing, but it's really cast this huge shadow over the mayor and also going into his reelection.

Brian Lehrer: When a reporter asked him about this, listen to this response.

Mayor Adams: First of all, your question was a stupid one. A lot of people were not expecting that. You were expecting it. Don't try to do what New Yorkers need and want and make it appear as though your opinions and your hopes and aspirations are what New Yorkers want. My job is to run this city and stay focused on running this city. That's what I'm doing. Part of that job is to raise the money- which I hate, by the way, raise the money to have a campaign. New Yorkers responded.

Raising the necessary money is part of the business. I've called for years, let's take money out of politics. No one should be calling New Yorkers asking for money. Let's give people the amount that you could spend. We're already giving money through the campaign's finance. I don't want to raise money. I don't want to spend hours raising money, but those are the rules of the game, and I have to follow the rules of the game. You all talk about it, but you also all look at the filings to determine personal political strength. There's a level of hypocrisy in your reporting. Either money doesn't matter or it does matter. That is the question that's in.

When it comes down to Brianna, the amount of paperwork that the CFB requires for a campaign to do is unbelievable. The amount of skill that you need, the amount of training, the amount of documentations, and I must have a team that could do that. She's knowledgeable on it, and I'm happy that she's able to do that administrative part of the campaign for the administration.

Brian Lehrer: Well, Liz, why did that question prompt the mayor to go off like that?

Elizabeth Kim: The question that was put to the mayor, and it was put by Jeff Coltin of Politico, was that, he looked at the mayor's filings and the spending he's doing on his legal defense fund, and this is the money he's paying his lawyers. He noticed that it was slowing down, that the money he's paying lawyers to defend him and his campaign in this ongoing federal investigation, that they've been going down.

He made this remark that this is kind of interesting. What does that say about the status of the federal investigation? Then he said, most people thought that we would have seen indictments by now, and that really triggered the mayor. That's where you hear him say, "No, I don't think most people thought there would have been indictments, most New Yorkers thought there would have been indictments by now," because he knows that this is something that's hanging over him and this is going to shape what is likely to be a competitive primary going into next June.

He's bristling at that question. Then there's also this issue too, and he was asked about this several times, is what exactly is Brianna's role now? Because not long after her home was raided, the mayor did announce that she would no longer be his chief fundraiser, but they have yet to say what her role exactly is on the campaign. She's being paid roughly $10,000 a month according to the recent filings, but they haven't said what her title is. He was pressed several times to explain it, but he couldn't exactly give a title. He just said, "There's a lot of administrative work that needs to be done, and that's essentially what she's doing."

Brian Lehrer: Last thing, speaking of the potentially competitive primary next year, earlier this week, we learned how much the mayor and his two primary challengers so far, Scott Stringer and Zellnor Myrie, have raised. Brad Lander also hinted on this show that he's considering a primary challenge against the mayor. What's new this week?

Elizabeth Kim: What's new is we see that even after the FBI raids, that the mayor has been able to raise a considerable amount towards his reelection campaign. He has roughly around $4 million in his war chest, but what's important to note is of that money, how much gets matched. The city has this very generous matching program in which eligible donations get matched-- every dollar gets matched eight times. For every dollar you get $8 if it's an eligible small donation from a city resident. If you factor that in, the mayor could have as much as $8 million. That puts him in a very, very strong position.

On the other hand, his two challengers, it's former Comptroller Scott Stringer, and also Brooklyn State Senator Zellnor Myrie, they had impressive raises. They're not raising as much as the mayor, but given a short amount of time, they're raising six figures, and if you factor in the match, they could easily have around $2 million.

Brian Lehrer: Elizabeth Kim, who joins us most Wednesdays after the mayor's Tuesday news conferences. Liz, thanks as always.

Elizabeth Kim: Thank you, Brian.

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