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Brian: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. We have Susan Page, Washington Bureau Chief from USA today coming up in a little bit to talk about those events as they continue to unfold so rapidly. Right now, don't forget the mayoral primary in New York City is on June 22nd. That's going to come up fast this year and here on the show are interviewing the candidates so you can start to get to know them and make an informed choice.

Today, we're going to talk to a candidate we will address as general. She is General Loree Sutton before serving as Mayor De Blasio's veteran’s affairs commissioner. She was the Army's highest-ranking psychiatrist. She earned a bronze star for combat action in the Gulf War and some of her top issues are improving quality of life, reducing violent crime, and addressing the city's mental health. General Sutton, welcome to WNYC.

Loree: Good morning, Brian. Happy to be here.

Brian: Why do you want to be mayor of New York?

Loree: I love the city, Brian. It's my chosen home after nearly 30 years in the army and I have lived here longer than any other place in my adult life. As I saw things going in the wrong way, in my view over the last couple of years, I just inbound and determined to bring sanity, leadership, and common sense to the city that I love and that was before the pandemic. It sounds quaint now, I thought that city hall needed to have a mayor who could be a trusted partner with the private sector, the philanthropic sector, the social sector, to really take on the challenges facing our city.

Now, after the pandemic, I call in all of my life experience as a public health doctor, a commander, a psychiatrist, and a lifelong public servant. I'm here to serve and no one person's going to be able to bring our city forward and lift all New Yorkers up but I certainly am putting myself out there to lead the charge. I'm a very, very different type of candidate not like any of the other people who are currently in this race, Brian.

Brian: Well, there are many people in this race who the public knows a lot better than they know you and who have been very involved in municipal government or city politics on many levels for a long time. Begin to make your case, since this is an introductory segment, why do you think you would be better than all those people to be the next mayor?

Loree: Well, I'll tell you, I believe, Brian, that this is a moment in which politics, as usual, has failed us. We are living in what some have described as a war zone, all the more so with the events of the last week or so with the pandemic, the financial collapse, the issues of polarization that are roiling our country and our city, and if conventional politicians were going to be relevant in this moment, we wouldn't be quite in the position we are.

I think that to have someone like myself who had leadership experience on a global front, leadership experience under life and death conditions, leadership experience leading those in harm’s way, as well as leadership experience here in the city standing up the division, the correction, the department of veteran services, the first new city agency in probably the last 15 years or so. What it means Brian, is that for someone like me, who I am not a career politician, I can look at old issues through a new set of lenses.

I don't have promises or handshakes or deals that I've made or a lifetime of views to defend. I can look at new and emerging challenges, again, with an open set of eyes and a lifetime of experiences to bring to this moment. I will say this. I believe very strongly that it is not my position to say why I would be best. I feel very strongly that New Yorkers deserve to hear from the candidates who are stepping up to serve in this moment and they deserve to make their own choice.

My job is to tell New Yorkers who I am, what I believe, what I had done, what my vision is for this moment, and then to respect their judgment. That gives you a little bit of an idea of who I am and what I bring to this challenge. I look forward to working with all of the current candidates. As you said, there are many of them who are in this race, and I think that's good. I think that it's good to have choices and yet now here we are five months till the primary. I really, I'm so grateful to you for extending invitations to every candidate in this race to really introduce us to New Yorkers. Thank you.

Brian: What are some of the main things you would do to reduce inequality in the city?

Loree: Inequality, first of all, I believe there's nothing wrong with our city that can't be fixed with what's right with our city and that's all of us. I really was so blessed to serve nearly 30 years in uniform working in the most diverse institution on earth, the United States Army. I bring a certain sensibility to my mission as a leader. I value all voices. I believe very strongly in the role of a leader to listen, to ask questions, to be very transparent in terms of what values I bring to a given challenge, and I think when it comes to equality, we got a lot of work to do in the city. We've got to work with parents and teachers and kids and families and improve our education system. We've got to work with small businesses--

Brian: If I may follow up, anything specific on how to improve education to have more equal outcomes, anything specific on housing or wages or police reform that you would throw out there as signature policies toward reducing inequality?

Loree: Sure. On education, I believe very strongly in working across our city to, for example, the debate on specialized high schools. I believe that we need more of them, particularly in the areas like Queens and the Bronx that are not well represented. I think the gifted and talented programs need to be much more available across our city.

I think that the test, one of the things that I'm interested in bringing to forums and discussions and engagements with communities is what about using the Regents exam, which reflects what's actually taught in the classroom as opposed to the current exam, which really requires expensive coaching and prep tutoring services. I think also when you see some of the current endeavors, for example, in Brooklyn, where parents and communities and the department of education have worked together, I don't think there's a block answer.

There's no cookie-cutter answer that will fit for every district, every school, every community but I think there are some lessons we can learn from some of the most recent efforts over these last two to three years. I think also there are things we can, what we wouldn't want to do more of at least under a Sutton administration. I don't think that riling communities or parents or accusing folks who don't hold my views, whether I'm the chancellor or the mayor accusing them of being somehow less than, or racist, that's not helpful for our city.

I also see that the city could really double down on the investments they've made. There been about 30 schools now that have been converted during Mayor de Blasio's terms into community centers. I think we should build more of those particularly in the neighborhoods that really need more representation, more resources. The way these community centers work is that the school becomes a community center. It's a place for parents and families and kids and the private sector and mixed-use retail and full-year programming, so to really be a resource for the city, I think we can reach out to the private sector.

Let's say adopt a school and let's open up a prentice. Let's open up pathways to the tech world. Let's open up, for example, some of the work that's been started earlier this year with CUNY and the partnership for New York City to be able to get skills into the hands of New Yorkers who all too often have been left behind. I think NYCHA represents another clearly important area for us to take on and to make a demonstrable, a tangible investment that honors the work, and the service, and hopes, and dreams of NYCHA residents.

You mentioned law enforcement and public safety. Some of the other candidates have talked about either defunding or abolishing the police or at a minimum at least shrinking down the responsibility of police when it comes to enforcing the law, enforcing and upholding public safety. I take a very different view. I think that as I talk to individuals, small business owners, and moms, and dads, and folks who live in areas of high crime, they want more police presence, not less.

Now, they want better police relationships, but I think that's where we have to give Mayor de Blasio some real credit over these last several years is that he showed that you can continue to bring down tactics like stop and frisk, which were so divisive and so destructive across communities of color in the city. You can continue through precision policing to bring down the levels of crime.

Now, granted over this last year we are in a very different situation now with the pandemic and with some of the issues that are now unruly before us. That's why I put together and published just a day before the coup on the Capitol last week on Tuesday, published my public safety plan. I'll continue to build on this, Brian, because this is something that is all of community, all of city. It's a plan that brings in not just in NYPD and community stakeholders, but it brings in the other city agencies who likewise have a stake in public safety, whether it be transportation, education. The mayor's office of operations would lead this.

I would appoint a public safety czar if you will. We bring in parks, we bring in probably seven or eight emergency management, seven or eight of the city agencies, including NYPD. We would have a way of being transparent with the data, welcoming in community advocates and stakeholders from across the city and we would share the challenge of maintaining public safety and public health in a city like ours so that we can set the conditions for people to be confident, to move back to our city, to be able to start businesses, to be able to survive in businesses that currently are just really in desperate shape.

I think that New Yorkers are looking for a mayor who will be visible, who will be out there, who will have skin in the game, and who will have had the experience of operationalizing complex, large plans and making them work across the city. That's part of what I bring to the office of mayor if elected, Brian.

Brian: This is WNYC-FM, HD, and AM New York, WNJT-FM 88.1 Trenton, WNJP 88.5 Sussex, WNJY 89.3 Netcong, and WNJO 90.3 Toms River. We are New York and New Jersey public radio with just a few minutes left with general Loree Sutton, who is running for mayor of New York. One of the many, many candidates who we're bringing on this show for first-pass interviews. She was the Veterans Affairs Commissioner under Mayor de Blasio. She was also the highest-ranking psychiatrist as a general in the United States Army, earned a bronze star for combat action in the Gulf War, and more.

Before you go, General Sutton, I'm hoping you can put on your psychiatrist hat for a minute. This might be a little bit off the topic of the mayoral race, but as you know, a second Capitol police officer is now dead as a result of the events last Wednesday at the nation's Capitol or we don't know how directly it is a result of that, but we do know that officer Howard Liebengood died of suicide. His family has now made public. You have been a psychiatrist for people in combat situations. What do you think when you hear something like this after an event like that?

Loree: This is an enormous concern of mine. It's been my life work, Brian, and I know that as we move forward, whether it be the aftermath of the coup in the Capitol or we saw the mom with her five-year-old child this weekend, we've seen the doctors, the nurses, the EMT. This is a moment where the social isolation that was endemic before this plague started is now even more pronounced.

What I've started back last April, every day I put out a one-on-one video short just bringing some words of encouragement, of hope, of strength. I wear a wristband with the Columbia protocol that's the most evidence-based tool for assessing imminent suicide risk. Every one of us should be aware of it. It's not a clinical tool, it's for everyday New Yorkers, everyday people who care about our brothers and sisters and fellow New Yorkers.

I also want to learn, I'm reaching out to folks who were here in the '80s, working in the AIDS crisis who have also post 9/11 Project Liberty. What I'm proposing is what I would call Project GRIT. GRIT meaning growth, resilience, initiative, and teamwork. This is an all of city effort that would come to full fruition in my administration, but in the meantime, I'm not waiting until then. We have started a lunch with Laurie every week where we're looking at public policy issues through the lens of whole health and brain health.

In fact, tomorrow, Brian, you might be interested, we're unpacking the work that's gone on over the last several years looking at, for example, Robert Sapolsky's work, Your Brain on Nationalism, the neurobiology of us versus them. More recently, there's work at Yale that is studying grievance and the addiction of grievance. What they're finding is that the brain when engaged in a state of resentment and grievance, it resembles the brain, the very same neural networks, the parts of the brain that are characterized by addiction.

Let's say your brain on cocaine. Those are the same parts of the brain, the reward systems that light up. This is very, very concerning, Brian, and it's going to require a community-led effort that is also supported from top-down leadership as well as middle-out engagement from all of our stakeholders to understand that as important as clinical treatment is, that cannot be where social support, and healing, and hope begins.

For us to be able to intervene and prevent the kind of suffering as you mentioned, the two suicides already, and so many others who have been lost in these last several months, in addition to the grief of those families and all of us who have lost people who are dear to us, this a time for us to come together and strengthen the ties of community to identify those things that we can agree on, that we can celebrate. Those that we're at an impasse, let's find ways to build bridges.

Another reason why I am a different kind of candidate, I will not participate in polarizing rhetoric. I will not budge from my position on the criticality of public safety as a psychiatrist. We know as individual, none of us can be our best selves without both feeling safe and being safe. If you can think of that, take it from an individual and now think about the nervous system of a city and what can the mayor do? What can all of the sectors, all of the stakeholders, the neighborhoods, the young kids? We got the world here in New York City.

What can we do together to build resilience to strengthen our ties and to make sure that New York City's best days are yet ahead because what we know for sure is that what happens here in our city influences so much of the rest of the country and of course, the world, and so it's a real responsibility here in New York City. I'll tell you one thing. I know we're about ready to close, Brian, but when I'm mayor, I'll be on this show every single week. We won't miss a single session after this term is out. I would look forward to continuing to talk about things that matter and what we together will be doing about them.

Brian: Well, we certainly hope that we can continue our Ask the Mayor series with whoever is elected next. Thank you for being interested in that for yourself if it's you. We leave it there with General Loree Sutton. She's a retired brigadier general who served as the Army's highest-ranking psychiatrist. She's also the former commissioner of New York City's Department of Veteran Services, now vying for the Democratic nomination for mayor of New York. Thanks so much for coming on with us. As I say to all the candidates, good luck on the trail.

Loree: Thank you so much, Brian. Take care. Stay strong.

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