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Brigid Bergin: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Brigid Bergin from the WNYC and Gothamist newsroom, filling in for Brian Lehrer, who is off today. He'll be back tomorrow. In the meantime, I'm broadcasting from my home in New York City. Coming up on the show today, we'll talk to Congressman Adriano Espaillat from upper Manhattan and the Bronx about the new bipartisan Coronavirus relief package that is on the table in Congress. It's a compromise for Democrats to try to get something through before the end of the year, when many people will lose unemployment benefits.

Later in the show, we'll talk to professor Christopher Emdin from Columbia Teachers College, who has ideas about how to improve remote learning, which most students, at least in the city are doing most of the time. We'll take your calls on why you still love New York after such a tough year. First, even if you're still focused on the latest big election, the races to run New York City are already well underway.

Next year the city will elect a new mayor, controller, public advocate, and two-thirds of the city council. These individuals are responsible for setting the policy and overseeing the administration of vital services from schools to sanitation, not to mention a multi-billion dollar budget. These leaders will also be responsible for leading the city through the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and out of the fiscal, public health, and racial and social justice crises that are left in its wake.

That's all to say, these elections are crucial, but even as the city saw record participation in the 2020 presidential contest despite the pandemic, with supporters from both sides describing it as one of the most important elections of our lifetime. The city often sees double-digit drop-off in voter turnout for these municipal elections with turnout rates declining consistently since 1989. To start things off this morning, we are going to have a conversation about why the 2021 elections are so important.

Joining me now to talk about how next year's elections will be unlike any other in the city's history and what issues mattered most, are Dr. Christina Greer, an associate professor of political science at Fordham University, politics editor at The Grio, co-host of the podcast, FAQ NYC and author of the book, Black Ethics, and Gloria Pazmino, politics reporter at Spectrum News NY1. Welcome back to The Brian Lehrer Show to you both.

Christina Greer: Hi, Brigid.

Brigid: I want to start with a little bit of context. We've all had those conversations with friends, family, and colleagues who feel really passionately about national politics and whatever the latest news is coming out of Washington. Sometimes those same people may seem less engaged in local politics. Dr. Greer, how do you convince people, including your own students that these local elections matter, and on the flip side of that, why do you think some otherwise civically-minded people sometimes just disengage locally?

Christina: Right. Well, Brigid, I always try and tell my students, do you remember "Tip" O'Neill that "All politics is local." When we think about New York City and the billions of dollars that the mayor and the city council are in charge of, when we think about how we view education or policing, or even environmental policy, all of this works together. There's always a lot of focus on the federal government, the president and Congress, which of course are incredibly important, but so much of our day-to-day life has to do with our representatives right here in New York City.

So many people have fatigue from the past 2020 presidential election that seems like it's still going since the president has yet to concede, but we have to sort of walk and chew gum at the same time because the New York City mayor's race and the races for the Manhattan district attorney, our borough presidents, city council members, roughly two-thirds of the city councils up for reelection.

It's incredibly important that we pay attention to who these public servants are, who these people are and what their vision is. What do they have to say about NYCHA? How do they plan to work with a new police commissioner or a new school chancellor or representatives in Albany and the governor? All of these issues directly relate to us on a daily basis, so we have to keep our eye on the ball.

Brigid: Gloria Pazmino, I think we have you now welcome to The Brian Lehrer Show. Are you there?

Gloria Pazmino: Good morning, Brigid. Yes. The wonders of working from home. Sorry about that. I hear you just fine. I hear Christina. Thank you for having me. I could not agree more. You put it perfectly at the beginning there describing how high the stakes are in this moment for our city, for every single New Yorker. We are in a moment unlike any other. We just simply cannot overstate the importance of these next couple of months as we begin to meet and hear from the candidates.

Also, as the city really begin to recover and come out of this crisis that we have been in in the last few months, there are so many issues on the table, not just related to COVID and everything that it has affected, but everything that was on the people before that. Everything Christina mentioned, housing, public education, transportation, our relationship with state government and the federal government, we simply cannot take our eye off the ball for this one.

Brigid: Gloria, you wrote this summer that "The mayor's race of 2021 is being defined by the pandemic summer of 2020." I'm wondering how do you see that playing out in terms of the current field and the appeals they are making to voters at this point?

Gloria: Well, I think that the reason I wrote about that definition that a couple of weeks ago is because the city has been so severely impacted by the COVID crisis. Everything from its economy, to our healthcare system, to small businesses, to rent, to jobs, really every part of our city, every part that keeps the city going has been affected by this. These candidates have really had to in a way pivot whatever their campaign was going to be or what they were thinking their campaign was going to be say seven months ago.

This is really now about the recovery. I think voters, I think the New Yorkers are looking to these candidates now to see how they're going to bring the city out of this. They want to see plans. They want to see new ideas. I think they want to know if a candidate is going to be able to manage what is effectively one of the biggest crisis in recent decades. Financially speaking, the city's in a big hole, so I think people are really going to be looking for those big ideas and plans.

Brigid: Listeners, we want to hear from you in this conversation. Have you began to tune into these local contests and particularly the mayor's race yet? What's the most important issue to you when it comes to electing the next mayor and is anyone speaking to your issues yet? Give us a call at (646)-435-7280 or tweet @BrianLehrer. That number again is (646)-435-7280. Tell us what you are hearing from mayoral candidates that is, or is not resonating yet.

Gloria, I just want to stick with you for a minute. In 2019 voters overwhelmingly passed a change to the city charter that would institute rank choice voting for primary and special elections here in the city. That takes effect next year. It could, for some voters take effect as soon as January. Can you describe how it will work for voters?

Gloria: Absolutely. Brigid, I'm so glad you're bringing this up because in my conversations with voters and people in government and in politics, there is some concern that people don't totally understand what this is. Let's talk about it. Ranked-choice voting, as you said, isn't going to change the way New Yorkers cast their vote or the way have been doing so at least for the last couple of decades. What it means is that instead of picking one candidate, when you step into that voting booth and filling out the little bubble next to that candidate's name, you now get to rank your choices by order of preference.

Let's say there's 5 candidates. Let's say there's 10 candidates. You get to go into the polling booth and you get to fill out their names in order of preference. First, you list the one you really, really like, the one you really, really want to win. Then you go on from there, your second choice, your third choice. When this is all said and done, those votes get all up tallied up. If no one gets 50% of the vote there is another round that the votes get recounted and passed on.

You probably lost me after I started talking about this [inaudible 00:09:55], and that is exactly where things begin to get a little bit complicated. It's not complicated in terms of it being hard to understand. I do think that because it's a new way of voting, it is extremely important and the burden will be on the city to explain how this is going to work for voters.

Brigid: Absolutely. It sounds like the complication really comes in in terms of the tabulation and the reallocation of those votes if whoever you vote for is not a top vote-getter. If your first choice has the fewest number of votes, well, then the rest of your choices are reallocated among the fields. Now, some voters in the city might get a chance to try out this new ranking system as early as next month, as I mentioned, for that special election to fill the 24th City Council District in Queens.

That was the seat held by Rory Lancman, who resigned to take a job with the Cuomo administration. Gloria, you reported about an effort among some council members to delay the implementation of rank choice voting. What's happening there?

Gloria: Yes. There is actually some real concern, particularly among the members of the Black, Latino, and Asian caucus of the city council. They are concerned that as we said, Brigid, this somewhat complicated change is not being highlighted enough, so they believe that the city isn't doing enough of a good job yet to explain this to voters. As a result, this will lead to disenfranchisement of communities of color, Black and brown voters, who will be impacted by this change, who will not know about the change and therefore be confused or not understand what's going on, when they show up to the voting booth.

That is leading to a somewhat heated debate among people who support the change, and people who want the change to be delayed. Supporters of rank choice voting say, this is actually not that complicated, and people can understand it. We just have to make sure that the education effort is there. Not only do New Yorkers need to pay attention to who's campaigning over the next couple of months, they're really going to have to be paying attention to the resources that are put out there so that they can educate themselves about these changes that are coming to the voting booth.

Brigid: Now, proponents of rank choice voting argue that one of the benefits is that it changes how candidates campaign. It's supposed to encourage candidates to potentially team up with each other and to get people to consider candidates as their number one and maybe number two, while talking about issues. Now, it's still really early, obviously, but this mayoral primary is going to take place in June instead of September, as has been the case for local elections for years. Professor Greer, are you seeing any evidence of that campaigning collaboration, so to speak?

Christina: Well, I think it's really interesting how these candidates are going to build coalitions but also build alliances with other candidates. We've seen, for example, say, Maya Wiley, who's from the borough of Brooklyn, but we've seen her have quite a bit of outreach on say, the Upper West Side. Dianne Morales, who's a candidate from the Bronx, but we've seen her come into Manhattan and build coalitions in that capacity. Also having Maya Wiley retweet Dianne Morales about being a woman of color in this race and so the mutual respect and coalition building that I think we'll see amongst the candidates, and between the candidates will be quite fascinating.

I do think that it's great to make sure that, if you are going to be the mayor of New York City, you need to campaign in all five boroughs. You need to make sure that your message and your policy proposals are heard and understood by citizens in all five boroughs. You shouldn't just rely on your one borough, your one neighborhood, and your one base to make your case. In this instance, I think rank choice voting will really give New Yorkers an opportunity to hear from a quite diverse set of candidates that maybe they wouldn't have heard from if rank choice voting wasn't on the table.

Brigid: You mentioned, Dianne Morales and Maya Wiley. Do you see a potential for any other alliances emerging among some of the other leading contenders?

Christina: I mean, I'm always interested in gender politics. Men sometimes group together when faced with powerful women, and there are quite a few powerful women in this race, four and counting. Especially if Christine Quinn decides to jump in, that'll make five. I am curious to see if we'll see borough alliances, the public servants versus the non-public servants. There are quite a few people who have never held political office before who are running versus those who, say someone like Scott Stringer, lifelong politician, and public servant, and Carlos Menchaca, someone who's relatively new to the political sphere but still has a record of public service.

How those coalitions shape up, I think time will tell, but as you mentioned, we have such a truncated electoral season, these candidates are going to have to convince New Yorkers that yes, even though it doesn't feel like the 2020 race is over, we also need to focus on New York City because the mayor of New York City is not just a local job. In many ways, it's a national and international job because of all the financial and policy implications of that leadership.

Brigid: You're listening to The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Brigid Bergin, City Hall and politics reporter filling in for Brian today. We'll continue with Professor Greer and Spectrum News politics reporter Gloria Pazmino and your calls right after this.

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Brigid: It's The Brian Lehrer Show. This is Brigid Bergin in for Brian today. I'm back with Dr. Christina Greer, an associate professor of political science at Fordham University and author of the book Black Ethnics, and Gloria Pazmino, politics reporter at Spectrum News NY1. Our first caller is someone who knows a lot about how to craft and appeal to primary voters. Phil Walzak is a political consultant who served as Mayor Bill de Blasio's communications director in 2013 on the campaign. He is an unaffiliated political consultant, not associated with any of the candidates in the current primary field. Phil, welcome to WNYC.

Phil Walzak: Hello, everybody. Good morning. Thanks for having me.

Brigid: Phil, from a political consultant perspective, how do you see rank choice voting impacting the challenges candidates already face in a crowded primary field given the compressed timeframe?

Phil: Well, it's certainly going to be a wild card. It's going to be a really interesting experiment in democracy. I think a few things, the more thing I would say that it's really unknown. I know that's an unsatisfying answer when you're looking for analysis. The reality is that we're introducing something so new to the city, that we don't really know how it's going to go. We were in the first inning and then we have an earlier primary than usual but we're in the first inning of a nine-inning ballgame.

If you look back to where there might be some lessons, I think back to the Democratic primary, we just went through in January, February, where there was a sprawling field, much like this. It was a bit of a parlor game where people shift their votes on ideology, like going from Bernie to Elisabeth Warren, would they have a connection on a generational line or an ethnic identity line. It was very interesting that the way the votes began to come in Iowa and New Hampshire is that, people's second choices as if you were, really defied convention.

There really was no single formula that dictated that someone who likes candidate A is going to automatically put candidate B as their second choice. That's because these things are unpredictable. There are a lot of cross-currents at play and you really have to see more. I would say that if I'm planning on how to tackle this as an electoral challenge, I would say a couple of things. One, I think you got to be city-wide. You can't cut and paste neighborhoods and coalitions together. You got to really have broad appeal, and you got to have a message.

This sounds cliche, but that really is sharp and breaks through. You can't really speak in platitudes because voters are going to be hearing a lot of platitudes, so whoever can really be most incisive and say something really that stands out I think it's going to have the best success.

Brigid: You kind of punted on our rank choice voting question, but from your professional position, would you encourage candidates to team up?

Phil: I think it's really interesting because I think the candidate has to make the best case of why they should get the number one amount of votes, so they can get to that big number and avoid that runoff scenario. I know it's not runoff in the traditional way. I think that if there are ways to tacitly appeal to other people's support base, and if there are ways to do it explicitly, I think that makes sense. It is an odd idea of candidates teaming up because at the end of the day each candidate will be vying for that number one slot. It's going to be curious to see if those coalitions and bargains can withstand the rigors of a six, seven-month primary race.

Brigid: Phil, just final question for you with your professional hat on, do you feel like someone is delivering those specific messages is cutting through in this broad field at this point?

Phil: I think all the candidates are really just giving the vague, sweeping, broad, general talking points without giving much specificity yet. In the de Blasio race back in 2013, de Blasio put forth a specific tax for a specific purpose, a tax on a certain amount of earners for a specific purpose of universal pre-kindergarten. That was the kind of proposal that was specific and I think appealing to a lot of people. We haven't seen anything like that yet.

We've begun to see some preliminary proposals coming out, but we have not seen from any of these candidates yet and, of course, it's early. I don't mean this as a sharp critique, but we haven't seen anything yet that is going to be that kind of laser-focused specific idea that really energizes and mobilizes New Yorkers to rally around it. I think we're not there yet.

Brigid: All right. Phil, thank you so much for calling in for joining us. Phil Walzak is a political consultant who served as Mayor de Blasio's communications director. He worked on the 2013 mayoral campaign and is currently unaffiliated with any of the candidates in the current primary field. Gloria, I wonder, before we go to a caller, I'd love to get your reaction to some of Phil's comments, particularly, as you talk to campaigns and as they try to wrap their heads around what rank choice voting will mean for their strategy, do you feel like anybody's really figured it out yet?

Gloria: That was very interesting, and, Brigid, Phil spoke like a true and tired political consultant that he is. I think that it has been interesting because campaigns, exactly like the voters are doing now, are having to figure this out as they go. What I will say is that I have found the idea of being everyone's number two, it's something that you hear over and over when you speak to these campaigns, because if we look at what could potentially happen in the first round of a vote tallying, if that first person who you are ranking isn't able to capture more than 50% of the vote, it really increases the chances of your number two to move up on the ladder, so to speak.

The idea of how a person will campaign, or if a candidate will campaign to be everyone's number two is kind of interesting. No one likes to be number two. In the world of rank choice it's actually not a terrible strategy. I think what Phil said about candidates speaking in platitudes and how they're going to be campaigning over the next couple of months is very true, in addition to what we were saying earlier in terms of candidates really having to make an effort to campaign everywhere. Because of turnout in the city, we've seen it in the past, where a candidate is usually able to just stick to his or her base. I don't think that's going to work out anymore.

Brigid: Let's go to the phones. Sheldon in the Bronx, welcome to WNYC. Tell us what is standing out to you about these 2021 elections?

Sheldon: Hi, good morning.

Brigid: Welcome.

Sheldon: I would just want to comment, having grown up in the Bronx and in my forties, talking about communities of color. A lot of times communities of color, they just not aware of local politics. I think it's something that needs to be put in the curriculum. Having grown up in the Bronx I worked under Fernando Ferrer's internship for two years in the '90s. I saw how things work and you can go to community board. A lot of times people don't even know about this stuff. I think it has to have a grassroots level to where you can engage the community by teaching about this stuff. We have social studies classes, have these assemblymen come in, what do I do? This is my job. This is what I help with.

Brigid: Sheldon as a voter and as someone who clearly is politically engaged, I'm just curious, the ways that you were describing you get some of your information are the very things that because of the pandemic are made that much harder. I'm wondering how are you getting some of what you need to remain engaged now, where are you going to hear from these candidates? Are you going to Zoom forums? What are you telling your neighbors and people in your own community about how they can get the information they need?

Sheldon: It's difficult because a lot of people just don't know. It's like, you talk to them-- I encourage people to go to the community boards. I encourage people to go online locally and try to just find out as much information as possible. They're not necessarily the Zoom meetings, but doing more, so reading grassroots stuff and sometimes you get the pamphlets, actually read those pamphlets that are coming from the assembly people and things of that nature.

Brigid: Sheldon, thank you so much for calling WNYC. Let's go to Marie in the Bronx.

Marie: Hi, good morning. I wanted to call in and get some comments on the interview with Raymond McGuire yesterday. I have some concerns because I worked on Wall Street for almost 20 years and I'm very familiar with Raymond Maguire. He is a Wall Street career executive. When he was at Citigroup, he was the co-head of all the merger investment banking. To me, his answers to the questions about relief for people for mortgages, relief for rent, his answers were, "No".

When he was asked about having a millionaire's tax, his answer was, "No". He said we can't tax our way out of this economic problem, this pandemic, but the reality is there's so many disparities in New York City alone. In Manhattan, you have a Federal Reserve, you have Wall Street, and then, in the Bronx, you have failing schools, schools that are being deprived of financing. We don't need another Bloomberg 2.0.

Brigid: Marie, for our listeners who might not have been listening yesterday, Ray McGuire is a former Citigroup executive who has recently joined the mayoral race and he was a guest on the show yesterday. Given the fact that his candidacy has raised some concerns for you, is there someone else who you feel like is speaking to the issues that you've talked about better?

Marie: I think any candidate that is speaking about the issues that the average citizen of New York is concerned with. How are they going to pay rent? How are they going to pay for food? How are they going to get another job? A lot of people have been laid off, how are they going to pay their mortgage? Any candidate that is saying that they're not willing to entertain taxing people who have money, people who have benefited from the Dow Jones average going up extremely high this year, this is not someone that we need to entertain for being a mayor. Anyone who is running for mayor should speak to the problems of the average citizen that is struggling right now.

Brigid: Marie, thank you so much for calling. Mary, thanks so much for calling WNYC. I wanted to get some reaction from our guests, Dr. Christina Greer, associate professor of political science at Fordham University, and politics reporter for Spectrum News NY1, Gloria Pazmino to some of what we heard just there. We're starting to hear people assess these candidates really based on the thumbnail sketches they're getting from their campaign launches. Dr. Greer, I'm wondering if you had any reaction to some of Marie's comments?

Gloria: Yes, and really quickly I wanted to go back to Sheldon's question from the Bronx. I definitely think that we need more robust civics in our public-school system. Just as a shout out, our colleague and friend L. Joy Williams, does have a podcast, Sunday Civics, where she tries to break down the local, state, and federal complications because so many people don't know the jobs of, say a mayor versus the governor versus the president. I agree with Sheldon, full-stop.

As for Marie's question, I mean, yes, this goes back to Phil's point about policy. We need people who can articulate a vision, the time for, "Okay, we just need a new police commissioner. Shay is not working." Well, of course, most candidates are going to say that. I want to know then who are you going to nominate because if Bill de Blasio had said that he was going to put Bill Bratton in office, he wouldn't have gotten my vote.

It's not enough to say, "Oh, NYCHA needs to be fixed." What are you going to do? Have these candidates actually been in NYCHA? Do they plan to privatize NYCHA? If they come from the corporate sector. It's not enough to just say, "Homelessness is bad." It's like, "Well, what are you going to do about evictions because we have so many working poor families?" 'We should close Rikers. "Okay. Then what is your plan for a Five-Borough strategy?" Or "What are you going to do with that land? Are you going to sell it off to developers?"

"If you don't believe in the millionaire's tax, how are you going to raise money in this city, because we know that we're strapped at the federal level, and Albany is quite complicated with someone like Andrew Cuomo at the helm?" This can go on and on. We can talk about small businesses and how large businesses are benefiting and making more money than ever and small businesses are struggling. What are we going to do with the Coronavirus pandemic? How are you going to think about health commissioners? Who would they be? Who's in your inner circle?

I mean, it's like, I have questions for these candidates and time is running out. Phil says, "We're in the first inning." I'm going to say we're in the second inning, honestly. We need all of these candidates of which they seem to be multiplying like gremlins on a daily basis. We need more and more of these candidates to start talking about specific policy. Right now, they're stuck in issues-phase. I want to know, start naming names. Who do you want in your cabinet? Who do you want to bring in? Is it someone from New York, are you going to look across all 50 states?

I think that is what will motivate and mobilize more New Yorkers to get interested because we'll start having deep conversations about our democracy and not just surface conversations about some of the issues that we can look around and obviously tell are apparent.

Brigid: I want to go to another caller. Adam in Woodside. Adam, welcome to The Brian Lehrer Show. Thanks for calling WNYC. Where are you weighing in on the 2021 race right now?

Adam: How's it going? Thanks for having me. I appreciate everything your guest just said. I wish even in the presidential election, more people earlier on would talk about who their cabinet members they want to be and stuff like that. At first, I really liked, Eric Adams. I've listened to him on The Brian Lehrer Show for all the last year until now. I always thought that he was really smart and articulate, and even [unintelligible 00:33:23] that I liked his experience as a police officer, but someone that it seems like a lot of Brooklynites really respects and can go to mitigate problems.

Then last week I heard Kathryn Garcia on your show and I didn't really know who she was that much. I tried to do a little bit more research and I'm still trying to learn more about her, but again the fact that she grew up as an adopted child with all these adopted siblings of different creeds and colors, it just seems like she really lived and represented the New York story. It also seemed like from what I understand that she's kind of a go-to fixer, like get things done.

Maybe she might have the technocrat skills that maybe, and I mean that in a positive way, that like a Bloomberg or maybe a CEO or someone that has really the management skills could have, to really get things done, but with her background that I would hope would be more progressive and representative of what all of New York City looks like. She just really struck me as someone that might be able to have it all be progressive but know how to really get things done.

I also really loved your last thing is that she's a woman of color. I grew up with people of color and different stuff, but she's not tooting that and making that a thing. I think a lot of people are maybe a little tired of the-- This is New York City, you don't need to tell us. We are all-- I just feel it's cool that she's just focused on what needs to get done. I'm excited to learn more about her.

Brigid: Adam, thank you so much for calling The Brian Lehrer Show. Gloria, I'm curious if you want to react to some of what Adam said, and part of what I think he was laying out is that the struggle that voters across the city are going to face with this ever-growing field of candidates. Just yesterday we saw Ray McGuire enter the fray, but we know that there are others who are still considering getting into this.

We know that Congressman Max Rose is giving a farewell address on the House floor today. What are you watching for as we continue to move through these final weeks of 2020 and into 2021?

Gloria: Yes, Brigid, I started keeping a list just to still make sure I don't leave anyone's name out when I'm writing about this stuff, which should give you a sign of the fact that there are probably already too many names in order for me to remember and make sure I mentioned all of them every single time. I think we're going to see more and part of what the caller said that I found really interesting, really illustrates what we know about the New York voter. The New York voter is engaged, they care, do their homework and that should not be underestimated, and certainly not underappreciated by these candidates.

Interesting to me that the caller was doing research about Kathryn Garcia. She's a virtually unknown candidate, except for the fact that she has been sanitation commissioner for the past few years. If you are someone who watches the news a lot, you might remember her from every time there was a snowstorm, she was probably on TV, but she is also someone who has a reputation as being Bill de Blasio's fixture. I mean that as a positive term. Every time there's a crisis, he called on her.

It's really going to be a challenge, I think for these candidates, especially because of the limitations of the moment that we are in now. You cannot stand outside of the subway stop and shake everyone's hand, and introduce yourself because we are living in pandemic times and that creates a set of different challenges. It's going to be interesting to see how voters keep up with all these candidates. To Christina's point that she was making earlier, I don't know what inning of the baseball game we're in because I'm stuck in the stand shoving popcorn into my face, because every time a new person jumps in, every time somebody says something--

I agree with Christina, I want to hear some more detail, "Yes, NYCHA needs help. Homelessness is bad, policing needs reform." Let's start talking about the, how, I think that for now, I've been hearing broad strokes and generalized ideas about, "Yes, we need recovery. Yes, we need change. Yes, we are financially strapped." I am still waiting from all of these candidates, the detailed "How", and that's what the next couple of months are going to be all about.

Brigid: Let's go to one more caller. Amy in Manhattan, welcome to The Brian Lehrer Show.

Amy: Hi, thank you. I'm a little confused about the-- when I heard that the two-thirds of the city council is up for reelection. Why two-thirds? I would think either all of them or maybe one-third at a time, like the US Senate?

Brigid: Sure, Amy. Gloria, do you want to jump in with that?

Gloria: Yes. This one of those wonderful New York election law things that we have, and Brigid, I know you've done so much work on this as well. Majority of the city council, will be term-limited very soon, and majority of the seats will open up. Actually, we're talking about the mayor's race, but another very important thing that's happening are also city council elections. Those are the people who truly represent you at the local level.

A majority of these lawmakers are term-limited. There are a handful of candidates, or lawmakers, I should say, who are in office now, who only have one term under their belt. They get to have another one, but because we just had the census, there was a law that there was a charter change that was made several years ago that said, every time we had a census we needed to have, and Brigid, correct me please if I get any of this wrong, we needed to have another election because the census lines would be redrawn, and the districts will change, so there are going to be some candidates who have to run for re-election third time.

Brigid: I think even more simplistically, Amy, to answer your question, we have candidates who have been elected through special elections so they're in off cycles. That contributes to some of the reason why we have folks who were elected more recently, so they're eligible for another term versus other folks who have been term-limited out. It's a fair question, and it is a huge turnover in that legislative body. Only a handful of folks will be there for another term, so those races will be the number of candidates that you will potentially be hearing from over the next year is rather large.

We're going to have to leave it there. My guests have been Gloria Pazmino, politics reporter at Spectrum News NY1, and Dr. Christina Greer, associate professor of political science at Fordham University. Thanks so much to you both for joining me.

Christana: Thanks, Brigid.

Gloria: Thank you.

 

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