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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC and now to your calls late deciders, if you've made up your mind in the last week for mayor of New York and the Democratic primary, or if you haven't even made up your mind, or any of your reaction to the campaign news of the last week. Or if the elevator pitch segments that we just did five minutes each with all eight of the leading contenders gave you anything to react to even help you decide just in the last hour, 646-435-7280 or tweet @brianlehrer. John in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, John, thanks for calling in.

John: Hey, Brian. Just quickly, I had Yang is first and Garcia's second. When I saw them combined pretty much against Eric Adams, because he's a delete, I lost all interest in either one of those candidates because I feel like they are purposely pulling away votes from the sky. This is my problem with rank choice voting, why are you ganging up on a guy to pull votes away from him just so it's done in your own self-interest?

Brian Lehrer: Well, they might respond, and give me your reaction to this, they might respond with, well, that's our job in the campaign, we're trying to win, not lose. If we think this is how one or the other of us is going to win, instead of somebody else, yes, we're going to do it.

John: Okay. That's in self-interest. All these people get on your show, they talk about what's the best for New York and, what's going to happen in the future but I just see that as a way of really gaming the system, this new system that's been put in place.

Brian Lehrer: John, thank you so much for checking in with us, we really appreciate it. Joseph in The Bronx, you're on WNYC. Hi, Joseph. Thank you for calling.

Joseph: Hello, Brian, it's good to listen to your show all the time. I've never been on. I've made up my mind today after listening to all candidates. I have chosen Wiley is first, Garcia is second. I'm one of those people on the bandwagon of giving the ladies opportunity to be mayor of New York City. I think it's time for a change. There are certain aspects that were very important to me like housing, education, and jobs. She addressed the issues all and it just sounded the way she was not reading from a script. She came out real and she came out to be somebody that I can trust to do the job.

Brian Lehrer: Joseph, thank you so much for checking in and making the first-time call. Do call us again. Gigi in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC Hi, Gigi. Thanks for calling.

Gigi: Hi, Brian, thanks for having the candidates on this morning. I've been decided for my first choice for a while, but today's segment was really helpful for me to rank the other candidates and use rank-choice voting to its full capacity, specifically what spoke to me was hearing Dianne Morales talk about how she addressed the concerns of our workers, I had only heard without doing enough research on my own that there had been a worker stop but knowing that she tried to help them unionize and paid them out for the remainder of their term was good to hear and so I'll rank her now.

Brian Lehrer: Gigi, thank you very much. Justin in Brownsville, you're on WNYC. Hi, Justin.

Justin: Brian, good morning again. Thanks for having me. I called last week, and my first choice was Yang, but after I watched the debate, and my second choice was Adams and people always question me because it seems like night and day, but after watching the debate, I actually switch it around. My first choice is Adams and the reason why I like Adams and I was going back and forth is because of stop and frisk first.

I'm a Black man here and in honesty, if politics was arithmetic and you subtract politics from politics, the answer would be honesty and I think a lot of these candidates only tell people what they want to hear and there's a reality that you have to face. As a Black man, I think stop and frisk was a good thing, the problem with stop and frisk is that it was broken and it needed to be fixed. I think Mayor de Blasio did a wrong thing throwing it out the door.

I think Eric Adams knows that African American want to hear, a lot more want to hear eliminate stop and frisk, but he didn't buckle under the pressure and just tell us what we want to hear and even though he says, will add more to it but I think the policies come in is good, because that's how we're going to get the guns off the street by stopping people, but do it in a more appropriate way and that is why I'm going to vote him.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you, Justin. I always appreciate your calls. Keep calling us. Karen in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Karen

Karen: Hi, Brian. Thanks for having me on. I've been leaning toward Andrew Yang and Catherine Garcia but hearing them today, solidified me for Andrew Yang.

Brian Lehrer: Because?

Karen: He expresses a real love for New York, I don't really get that from anybody else, I really don't and that somehow it just reaches me a heart level. Also, I was concerned about that police union endorsement but I liked the way he addressed that. He's like, look, they're not the Trump voters, which I imagine is true and also because he's like, you got to work with them and I think that's true.

I've been bingeing this show on PBS called Philly D.A, which is about Larry Krasner, who's a very progressive district attorney down there and he's had huge pushback from the police in the community, about letting people go and stuff like that and you have to be able to communicate with people what your program is. I also like the fact that Andrew says, he's not that ideological. It's like, if it's a good idea, I'll respond to that and I'll go with it and I think that's leadership. [unintelligible 00:07:20]

Brian Lehrer: Let me follow up on one thing that you said, you don't think they all, at least, love New York?

Karen: Well, I imagine they do but it just doesn't come through in the way they talk about New York. When Andrew went out there the first day the movie theaters were open and he was there when he was in Coney Island. I don't know, I just get a sense of joy from him about it, which I just like.

Brian Lehrer: Karen, thank you so much for checking in. Jude in Washington Heights you're on WNYC. Hi, Jude.

Jude: Hi. Thank you so much for having me on your show. It's been so helpful in thinking through these choices. I wanted to say that I have changed my thinking about Katherine Garcia since she started campaigning jointly with Andrew Yang. I'm a progressive voter, I'd sort of maybe been looking on the rosy side of her platform from the progressive perspective after the New York Times endorsements. When she started campaigning with Yang, it made me look a little closer because I am very opposed to Yang's views on charter schools, his friendliness to real estate industry. Now I'm thinking that maybe Garcia won't be so close to the top of my ballot. After all, thinking in the present tense. This is tomorrow, but I'm a very late decider, I guess.

Brian Lehrer: I guess.

Jude: I wanted to ask you about ranked-choice voting, if I may. If I put somebody first, who ends up ranking late, in the middle of the pack, doesn't that mean that my second choice won't be counted unless there are many rounds of reallocation?

Brian Lehrer: I'm not sure if I understood your question precisely but each time they eliminate first the person who gets the least votes and whoever voted for that person first, then that voters second choice is tabulated in the next round. Then if whoever comes out second to last, that person is eliminated, and they keep going down each voter's ballot. Must have been quite an act of computer programming with 13 candidates on the ballot to get ready to do this but I don't know if that clears it up for you, but I think that's the best I can do right now.

Jude: Thank you. I appreciate it and it confirms my concern, so thank you.

Brian Lehrer: Jude, thank you very much. Tracy in Brooklyn. You're on WNYC. Hi Tracy.

Tracy: Hi. I'm Tracy in Brooklyn and rank voting is a big adjustment that I probably spent six or eight hours looking up, follow candidates, and every category that I could vote for in Brooklyn. I got to know people which I would not have done. I really enjoy your program and listening to everyone. Although Katherine Garcia did say the environment and her three questions when you look her up on [unintelligible 00:10:33] but you didn't mention anything about that today that I heard anyway, and the environment is extremely important and we could integrate that into jobs on insulating people's houses, fitting their windows, giving help. Teaching people how to sign up for and helping them set up for community solar and ESCOs that actually work and checking on ESCOs so the rates don't go up. That we can get off fossil fuel, and we need to allow people to put in chargers for electric cars, and we need to do all that stuff on a city-wide basis and all public transportation should be electric.

Brian Lehrer: You're confident that Garcia is going to be the best at moving the city toward all those environmental goals? If I'm hearing you correctly.

Tracy: No, whoever is running needs to put that in our brain that, that needs to be a major thing. It's as important as stop and frisk. It's important as schools and teaching and equal pay and making sure that people have food. If we're completely flooded and the entrance to the tunnels and the bridges are underwater, which they easily could be. We've been very lucky. We haven't had any major storms here for quite a while.

Brian Lehrer: Tracy, thank you very much for your call. I appreciate it. It is true that the major media, at least I agree with her that the major media has focused maybe too narrowly in the last few weeks on, this is about approaches to crime when there are so many issues in play, but there's Tracy in Brooklyn with her thought, which is going to be the last thought in this segment.

Thank you all late deciders for calling in. I hope the eight elevator pitch interviews that we did earlier in the hour with the eight leading democratic primary health posts have been helpful to you. We're going to keep going on all the races. After the news, we have Jeff Colton from City and State, that publication, who's going to come on and he has been aggregating all the endorsements and some of them it's really interesting to see how people and institutions including unions, as well as individual politicians, individuals celebrities, other people, come out.

We're going to talk about endorsements for mayor, endorsements for controller, the other city-wide office that's really up for grabs. There's some pretty big endorsement news from public advocate, Jumaane Williams in the last day. Also, from Manhattan DA, where people are really choosing up sides in that race has gotten really hot in recent days. That's all still to come.

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