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Brian Lehrer: The Brian Lehrer show on WNYC Good morning everyone. Well, we had the first official New York City mayoral primary debate last night, which I was honored to be a questioner in alongside Errol Lewis from New York One and Josefa Velásquez is from the news organization, THE CITY. Josefa will join me in just a minute, along with WNYC and Gothamist Liz Kim with some analysis. Before we bring them in, I want to invite you in. Let's try it this way, and screeners heads up. The polls so far have shown that more people have been undecided than were backing any candidate.

Let's make this call in for those of you who went into last night's debate undecided. Who did you come out more likely to vote for and who did you come out less likely to vote for, if anyone? 646-435-7280. Again, this is for those of you who went into last night's debate undecided in the New York City democratic mayoral primary. Anything you want to say really. Of you went in undecided, who did you come out more likely to vote for? Who do you come out less likely to vote for? Any one moment that struck you was particularly interesting. If you went in undecided last night, 646-435-7280.

If you're already in somebody's camp, or working for them, we ask you to sit this one out and let some of those many New Yorkers who are undecided, maybe you're just starting to pay attention to the race, as many people are, which would be totally normal. Let those folks have the floor for right now, okay? 646-435-7280f or those of you who went into last night's debate undecided. Who did you come out more likely to vote for? Who did you come out less likely to vote for? What was revelatory to you if you watched or listened? 646-435-7280. With me now on WNYC and Gothamist Elizabeth Kim and Josefa Velásquez, senior reporter from THE CITY. Hi, Josefa. Hi, Liz.

Josefa Velásquez: Hi Brian.

Elizabeth Kim: Good morning.

Brian Lehrer: Josefa, should we give the listeners a little glimpse behind the scenes first? I think I'm not talking out of school to say one of the big challenges was how to have a debate with eight candidates in just two hours and cover enough ground. We had so many hours of meetings, you and me and the people from New York One. We had so many good questions that we were all bursting to ask, but we couldn't do every topic of importance to the city. Hopefully we did some good. There are two more televised debates where journalists from other news organizations will get their chances to ask other questions. What would you like to tell people about the process?

Josefa Velásquez: Well if you thought moderating a Zoom debate was difficult, you were right. It's definitely a challenging task to try to get eight people not to talk over each other and Zoom has this particularity where if two people talk at same time they cancel each other out and create this like static noise so it doesn't help anyone. As you mentioned, we had so many other Zoom meetings to plan for this one and in some ways it feels like we barely scratched the surface, because there are so many issues that we touched upon that deserve more airtime, that deserve further explanation from the candidates, but at the same time there's eight of them.

I don't know, in any other situation, where there have been that many candidates that you need to toggle through. In my Twitter mentioned, people are asking, "Wait, why did this person not get that question? It's not fair." We tried to do our best to ask every single candidate an array of questions on certain topics. Some of them didn't get to answer them.

Eight people is a lot and two hours, while it seems like it may be a lot, really flew by.

Brian Lehrer: I think I had seven Queens DA candidates in the green space a couple of years ago, but eight is a personal record. Liz, I see that in your Gothamist article on takeaways from the debate the first one you cite is public safety arguments are met by social justice concerns. Here's an example of that. 24 seconds of an exchange between Eric Adams, a former NYPD captain and police reformer from within, as well as current Brooklyn Borough president, and Maya Wiley who used to chair the civilian complaint review board and is a civil rights attorney. This starts with Wiley sharply questioning Adams, who wants to bring back the controversial plainclothes cops known as the anti Crime Unit.

Maya Wiley: How can New Yorkers trust you to protect us and to keep us safe from police misconduct?

Eric Adams: Thank you so much Maya. Every time you raise that question, it really just shows your failure of understanding of law enforcement. Let me give you some-

Maya Wiley: Having shared the New York City civilian complaint review board, I certainly understand misconduct.

Brian Lehrer: Liz, can you give us more context, as you perceived it last night as a viewer or a listener? From your coverage of the campaign overall, what did that exchange represent about policy differences on how to fight crime and over policing at the same time?

Elizabeth Kim: That exchange was interesting because it reflected how the candidates are ideologically divided on how to address gun violence. You have moderate candidates who are asking for either more or a steady amount of policing, while progressives who have allied themselves to the defund the police movement are warning about the dangers of over policing and its disproportionate impact on Black and brown communities.

Brian Lehrer: You also note in your article that only Yang and Adams say they would bring back that plain-clothes unit disbanded under Mayor de Blasio called the anti Crime Unit. Why is that unit a flashpoint?

Elizabeth Kim: It's a flashpoint because Commissioner Shay last year disbanded it because he said that it actually involved more officers in shootings with civilians. He was arguing that it was counterproductive, so it's very interesting that both Yang and Adams want to bring it back. Adam says he can bring it back because he's going to put more competent officers in that unit, but I guess it's debatable. This was a unit in which the current police commissioner said didn't work.

Brian Lehrer: Josefa, anything to add on this topic before we move on to the question you asked about homelessness?

Josefa Velásquez: I think Liz has it exactly right. This issue of crime has become a flashpoint in the debate and after last year's demonstration following George Floyd's death, the conversation has still focused on, ,well, what happens to the future of the NYPD? You've seen a sudden spike in crime in New York City and some candidates are really trying to play more towards moderate voters who are concerned, while others are definitely trying to ride the wave of this defund the police movement.

Brian Lehrer: Let's get a few phone calls in here, then we'll go on to the question that you asked about homelessness, the question I asked about education and some other things. Jen in lower Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hi, Jen.

Jen: Hi, Brian. Thanks for taking my call. I thought it was a great debate. All the moderators asked a lot of the questions that my family and I care about. I had been looking at Ray McGuire, Eric Adams and Catherine Garcia. Based on the debate last night, I thought that Miss Garcia really moved up on my list. I was honestly disappointed in Mr. Adams, especially in the exchange that he had with Maya Wiley. I don't agree on anything with Miss Wiley, but I just thought that Mr. Adams was a little bit patronizing and somewhat unprofessional in that exchange. I thought it was a good debate and it really did help me solidify my list a little bit more than before.

Brian Lehrer: In that exchange we played where Wiley and Adams were going after each other, they both lost for you and your family?

Jen: I was not considering Maya Wiley at all. The issues that we care about a little bit more on the moderate side. We're not at all considering Mr. Yang, but I was just disappointed in the tone of that exchange. I expected more from Mr. Adams, frankly. I think Miss Garcia was just no drama really, very clear, I have been reading about her and she just seems like a very efficient person who will just put her head down and get things done. I think that was demonstrated in the debate as well.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much for your call, Jen. We appreciate it. Tiffany on the Lower East Side. You're on WNYC. Hi, Tiffany.

Tiffany: Hi, Brian. This is the first time I've actually called but I listen all the time. Thanks for taking my call.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you.

Tiffany: This is the first time that I am voting in the New York City Mayoral race. It's very exciting and I would love to hear more genuinely what the candidates are proposing. I felt like I didn't really get that from last night, it just felt like a lot of talking points. Two things that stood out to me, I would say were, youth stop and frisk debate, which I was a little disheartened to hear. I agree with Maya Wiley that the statistics show that a majority of the people that were stopped and frisked were, of course, not really guilty of anything. To hear, I believe was it not Ray McGuire? It was-

Brian Lehrer: Eric Adams.

Tiffany: Eric Adams, thank you. That was a little disappointing and the other point that I wanted to make is that I see a lot of homelessness. I've seen it actually increase throughout the time I've lived here now, for about two years. That's definitely something I was hoping would be addressed in yesterday's debate. I really liked Shaun Donovan's answers with regards to his experience with Obama. Just really tackling the underlying problems of homelessness, as opposed to just saying, we’ll just take all of the free apartments, free hotels, and we'll just have everyone there." I thought that was not really practical and not really well-thought through. Again, just a talking point. I would say Shaun Donovan out of all the candidates was most interesting to me at this time.

Brian Lehrer: Tiffany, thank you so much for your call. Tiffany was very interested in the homelessness issue and Josefa, you asked what they would do about homelessness. Here's a 12-second clip of Andrew Yang honing in on one of his policy proposals.

Andrew Yang: The street homeless population I've committed to reducing by 50% or more. The way we do that is by investing in safe haven beds, psych beds, supportive housing and a better standard of intervention.

Brian Lehrer: Josefa, how would you start to put that clip into context of how the candidates might try to fight homelessness differently?

Josefa Velásquez: A lot of the candidates brought up the need for more housing and as the caller who had just talked said, that they didn't really get into the specifics. Creating more housing sounds lovely and easy and great, but it's a tremendous amount of effort to try to increase the housing stock in New York City. Production of housing has been low, the cost of creating more housing has continued to soar and there's also all these issues with rezoning and trying, and as we saw, I think it was last year. Time is blending into one long circle at this point, but when you have homeless people in hotels, there's an incredible amount of backlash from the local community.

We saw that with the Lucerne on the Upper West side. I do think that there is space for the candidates to really flesh out their plans. Yesterday's debate was the first time that the candidates are pitching themselves to the general public who may have not been paying attention to all these really wonky forums for the last few months. They really need to hone in on what their concrete plans are to tackle the rise of the homeless population. At this point you can obviously tell that the electorate in New York city is incredibly smart and plugged in and they don't just want talking points. They want answers. They want plans. They've had to deal with the last few years of rhetoric and they want action.

Brian Lehrer: Liz, in your Gothamist article, you described the candidates as tending to give uniform answers on homelessness. Did you not find much of a distinction on that issue?

Elizabeth Kim: In general, and I've been watching a lot of these Zoom forums, the answers on how to tackle homelessness tends to coalesce around the very same answers that Andrew Yang gave. Safe haven beds, supportive housing. One he didn't mention but a lot of them mentioned is increasing the amount of the rental vouchers that are given to low-income individuals in the city. Then there's the other one that Josefa mentioned, which is making affordable housing more affordable. Everyone seems to coalesce around these general ideas and I think experts accept them as good responses.

The question is implementation. How do you get this done? How do you pay for it? Like Josefa mentioned, increasing affordable housing, especially at the very lowest income, is difficult.

Brian Lehrer: Josefa, did you get any sense of some candidates approaching homelessness more as a problem for the people experiencing it themselves versus those who might've been appealing more to non-homeless people who see homeless people in their neighborhoods as a nuisance or a threat? Did they all avoid that duality to your eye?

Josefa Velásquez: It seems that we did get a taste of that when Errol had asked them whether they would abide or acquiesce to the MTA requests of having more NYPD on the subways. You had all the candidates except for Dianne Morales and Maya Wiley raise their hand, I believe. Someone should correct me if I'm wrong. It seems that some of the candidates are trying again to play to the moderate Democrats, people who have lived in the city, who are inconvenienced by the presence of homeless people on the subways and those who, like Maya Wiley responded, said we need more mental health training, more mental health resources for these people.

One of the things we didn't touch on, which hopefully the next debate can, is that a lot of the people who are homeless are also suffering from mental health issues and there has to be a way to deal with that. The shelter, people who are homeless often say that the shelters are not safe and if they do not feel comfortable thing they're not the only resource that they have is to live on the city streets or the subway. I would love to see the candidates flesh out more of what their plan is to come at the root cause of all of this. If the shelters aren't safe, there aren't enough mental health resources, well, what's the plan after that? How do you get to that cost?

Brian Lehrer: Let's hear what some more of our listeners thought if they went in undecided to the first mayoral primary debate last night. Jason in Harlem, you're on WNYC. Hi Jason. Thanks for calling.

Jason: Hey Brian, how are you doing? Thank you for last night too, the debate was really helpful for me to get a sense of which direction I'm leaning in. I was pretty undecided going in but after listening to all the candidates and then going on their websites and looking what they had to say, I'm leaning more towards Maya Wiley at this point.

Brian Lehrer: Why?

Jason: Two reasons mainly. One of the big issues for me is policing in the city and I really appreciated her stance on that and her experience on the civilian review board. Mainly because of the fact that she's willing to take a significant amount of money out of that budget and put it towards, and this is piggybacking on what the last person was talking about, mental health aspect, the mental health approach, which I think is really important. Really, I was just trying to get a sense of who these people are. There was something less performance about her and more authentic.

I just felt like I could connect with her as a person. At the end of the day, for me, it's time for a female mayor in the city. We've had our share of male mayors. We've had our run and that hasn't always worked out.

Brian Lehrer: For 200 years plus, so maybe it's time for a woman.

Jason: Just 200 years.

Brian Lehrer: Jason, thank you very much. Jim in Queens, you're on WNYC. Hi Jim.

Jim: Hey Brian, thank you for yesterday's the debate. Two things. Number one, my problem was trying to figure out 225, I think. I had made up my mind for Kathryn Garcia actually a week before there was a New York Times endorsement. I think the main problem here, and I've heard a lot of people saying nice things about Maya Wiley. I also came away more impressed with your interview of Eric Adams and during the debate and also a little bit of Ray McGuire, even though he had an incident with the house. The issue for me, though, is always going to be execution.

Every single thing you want to do, police reform, even educational reform, that's not a knock against municipal unions, but you got to be butting heads with these people. Everybody's got a stake, everybody's got something they want to protect. I read this article in the New Yorker two weeks ago about Brownsville and the complexity of this whole police community relations thing is beyond even my ability to really understand or comprehend. That's why I'm leaning towards even Adams as my number two, only because he's a black guy who grew up in New York. He also was a cop. I understand there's a machine politician stuff, but I think he do need a nuance of view, which I think is more in line with everybody.

I don't care if you call it defund, reform. The names don't matter. It's trying to figure that out and working with all the different stakeholders. The cops are, do you like it or not, going to be one of them. One suggestion for your next debate, Brian, transportation. I thought that ties into everything else that's going on. I'm don't know if we're going to get subway service, that may be too expensive, but we have to need creative ways to get around and diversifying the economic geography. When I think about the Amazon deal, and I know you asked about that, was that the idea was to move some flow maybe out of Manhattan and into Queens. It could deal with overcrowding, but the problem is that we don't know what the ridership's going to be going forward due to COVID.

Brian Lehrer: Jim, thank you for all of that. I really appreciate it, and it's true. A little behind the scenes, transit was one of those we agonized about trying to get in in some way. Yet with so many candidates and so many pressing issues, that one did not make the cut last night. Hopefully one of the other two official debates that are upcoming, they'll be able to pick that up. Hint to CBS or NBC or whoever you are. Jeff in Inwood, you're on WNYC. Hi Jeff.

Jeff: Hi Brian. Thanks for taking my call and thank you for participating in the debates, and your colleagues as well. They were excellent questions. I went into the debate with a strong feeling for Scott Stringer and I still like Scott a lot and I thought he articulated his ideas very well and he wasn't grandstanding and just talking the talk. He had some really concrete ideas, moving forward. I was really interested in hearing from the other candidates and I came away a little bit more supportive of Katheryn Garcia and Morales. I like both of them and their ideas a lot. I was disappointed by Eric Adams.

Prior to the debate, I was on the fence with him, but just some of the way he responded to some of the questions and in his ideas, I found that I didn't agree with them as much. I was disappointed with Sean Donovan because I didn't think that he really articulated his ideas or his experience. Clearly he has a lot of experience, but he didn't really say how he did things. He said, "I did this, I did that," but he didn't say how he changed homelessness or dealt with housing issues in New York City and I would have loved to hear how he was successful in doing that.

Brian Lehrer: We're going to play a Dianne Morales clip in a minute. What drew you to her last night? You mentioned her name.

Jeff: Her plan on education. I thought she had a really interesting plan to deal with the public school system situation, also Scott Stringer I thought I had a really good idea of having two teachers in every classroom, just like the more privileged schools where they have a very active parent body that can raise money for extra teachers. I really like both of their ideas related to that. One thing that I really regret that I haven't been hearing in the debates and also in the discussion on your show is the issue of sanitation in this city. I think the city needs a major cleanup and the sanitation department really needs to be fully funded. I'd really like to hear some people's ideas about cleaning up New York because it's a mess.

Brian Lehrer: Jeff, thank you very much for that. We're going to take a one-minute break. When we come back, we will play exactly what Jeff was referring to, coincidentally, Dianne Morales on education. Also Ray McGuire on education. An interesting little exchange I had with Katheryn Garcia on health inspections for restaurants. She doesn't think they're so necessary, or at least not as a surprise set of inspections. We'll continue with Elizabeth Kim from Gothamist, who's covering the race and Josefa Velásquez is from THE CITY, who was one of the questioners last night, and your calls. Stay with us.

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. We're talking about last night's first mayoral primary debate with Josefa Velásquez from THE CITY, who was one of the questionnaires along with me and Errol Lewis from New York One, and Elizabeth Kim who's covering the mayoral race in great detail for Gothamist. I recommend everyone to Liz's Gothamist coverage of the mayoral race. She watched it as a viewer, which is a different perspective that Josefa and I who were watching it while trying to figure out what we were going to do next. Listeners, we're inviting your calls if you went into last night's debate undecided. If you really didn't know who you were going to vote for and maybe you still don't know, but last night started to help you make up your mind, you are who the phones are for right now. 646-435-7280 or you can tweet @BrianLehrer. I asked them about how to desegregate and otherwise reduce disparities in education in New York City. Here are two excerpts from those answers, first Dianne Morales.

Dianne Morales: As the only former educator classroom teacher in this race, as the mother of two public school graduates, both of whom had IPs, I am committing to, in my first 100 days, an education executive order that will immediately begin to desegregate our schools. That means removing all barriers to access and all screenings. It means including redrawing boundaries of our school districts to make sure that there's increased access across the board.

Brian Lehrer: That's a little bit of Dianne Morales and here's 30 seconds of Ray McGuire on schools.

Raymond McGuire: My plan is called cradle to career. You can see that Ray from air.com, the signature component of this is going to be making certain that no child leaves the third grade without the ability to read and do math. All the educators will tell you that between zero and three our children are learning to read, after that they're reading to learn. We've lost far too many whom we didn't teach how to read. Then we're going to go forward to make certain that in the eighth grade are children are getting exposed to summer jobs, career opportunities, including vocational careers.

Brian Lehrer: A little bit of Raymond McGuire there. Liz Kim from Gothamist, you described their responses to the education question as being very distinct, meaning more different from each other than on some other things. You cited Dianne Morales having perhaps the most aggressive policy. We played a little of that clip. How did you see this set of responses?

Elizabeth Kim: I was really surprised because you got a real garden variety of answers but if you really think about it, with the exception of Dianne Morales, they're not all directly answering your question, which is how would you tackle school segregation? This issue has been on the forefront of city officials' minds for a long time. There was a commission that was set up to study it and the recommendation was the city needs to remove screens. It does more screening than any other public school system in the country. What was interesting was everybody's going around the issue. All the candidates know this because they've been asked about the issue of screening, but screening is actually a very controversial issue. That's why you have people saying things, like Donovan says, "I'll increase the number of teachers of color."

Yang says, "I'll provide a thousand dollars to families living below poverty." Garcia says she'll expand the number of high schools. The question is, will these proposals tackle segregation in the school? Will it do more to reduce segregation? You can say that, for instance, Wiley and Springer both say they want to substantially increase the number of teachers. Then again, if you think about the question was what will you do to tackle segregation? It was very interesting how the candidates chose to answer it and in some ways really not answer it.

Brian Lehrer: I gave them a little more leeway than that, I would say segregation and disparities in educational outcomes in general. Josefa, were you able to focus on that set of answers or were you getting your housing questions ready, which were up next at that point?

Josefa Velásquez: It's funny because people don't see what's going on behind the scenes. As I'm trying to pay attention, there's a producer yelling in my ear, "Let's keep it short. We have to deal with housing next and we only have five minutes to do it." I'd have to give Errol a lot of credit for being able to manage all of these things at once. To Liz's point, it's really fascinating to see how the candidates didn't answer this question. We've had so many forums that they're completely mind-numbing, but this is something that keeps coming up. The issue of school segregation has dogged De Blasio's administration and all of the education folks that have worked for him.

I would have expected them to come up with more solid answers because they knew this question was coming. It's been asked for time and time again. Again, I think it's time to stop talking in generalities. The people of New York want answers in a way that maybe they're not the candidates haven't been prepared for yet. It's a lot of rhetoric without getting to the core of the question of how will you desegregate schools and will these policies that you're floating actually do that?

Brian Lehrer: Anita in Park Slope you're on WNYC. Hi, Anita.

Anita: Hi. First off, I love listening to your show. I never call in but I was so outraged by one of the points in the Q&A. When the subject came up of should public school children be vaccinated, I believe all the mayoral candidates said yes, possibly one said no. The next question, should public school teachers be vaccinated, I believe every candidate said no. That doesn't make sense. I'm afraid that candidates are looking to garner support from more teachers union endorsements. That's all I have to say.

Brian Lehrer: Anita, thank you very much. Scott Stringer has already locked that up, the teachers union endorsement, just for the record. For those of you who didn't see it, I asked a few show of hands questions on education which produced some differences. I asked the question, actually the one Anita refers to was submitted by one of you, a listener named David, when we solicited questions here on the show for the debate. This one was, if anyone would require COVID vaccines for students once the vaccines are authorized for regular use, not just emergency use, for whatever age groups.

I threw in the fact that many colleges are now requiring all students to get vaccinated. That's split them five-three. The three candidates who said they would not require the vaccines were Wiley, Adams, and McGuire. Everyone else said they would. When I followed up, and Anita the caller got it exactly right. I followed up by asking who among those saying yes would also require them for teachers. Nobody raised their hands. One other that I did with a show of hands-on education, I asked who would keep the SHSAT exam as the sole criteria for getting into the specialized high schools like Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, and Brooklyn Tech.

Just two candidates said they would keep the exam as the sole criteria and they were Kathryn Garcia and Eric Adams. Liz, any comment on either of those issues and why those divisions may have come out the ways they did?

Elizabeth Kim  With the vaccination question for children it was Maya Wiley, it was Eric Adams and Ray McGuire. I assumed that the reason that they kept their hands down for that was because there was great hesitancy and skepticism in communities of color. My suspicion was that they wanted to respect that because there's a history there. There's a very abusive history there. I think they were acknowledging that. I thought it was peculiar too, that none of them raised their hands when it came to vaccinations for teachers. I think that that just represents that it is going to be a controversial or perhaps contentious discussion that we're going to have about all adults.

People who work not just in city schools, but maybe for the city itself, and maybe for private companies. What is our role? What is the role of an employer going to be going forward? Can an employer, should an employer force or require that their employees are vaccinated? I think that the reason that they kept their hands down was out of maybe an awareness that not everyone is going to want to say that I have to be vaccinated in order to show up at work.

Brian Lehrer: I will say that even the colleges that are requiring students to get vaccinated, the ones I've seen are not requiring faculty and staff to get vaccinated, which a lot of people find weird. That duality seems to exist beyond this debate. One last clip in a section I moderated on how to ease the regulatory burden on small businesses. I had this brief exchange with Kathryn Garcia, who said she would end surprise health department inspections at restaurants.

Kathryn Garcia: They can schedule the appointment so their staffed to be able to manage it moving forward, rather than losing a whole night's worth of receipts.

Brian Lehrer: They wouldn't hide stuff and clean up for the inspector with the appointments?

Kathryn: They would not be hiding stuff.

Brian Lehrer: She went on to say almost no one gets sick from eating at New York City restaurants, so it's really a non-issue. Did that surprise you, the review, Josefa? It was a small point out of all the things we talked about last night that are considered the major issues facing the city, but it was interesting.

Josefa Velásquez: Yes. Who would have thought that one of the Democratic candidates would be talking about getting rid of some regulation? We have to say that the restaurant industry has really taken a hit by the pandemic, it hasn't recovered yet. There's been workers who lost their jobs, restaurants shut down. It is definitely a strategy to try to cultivate some goodwill among small businesses. The restaurant industry in New York is just completely massive. Again, it employs a lot of undocumented workers, a lot of immigrant workers. It was definitely a little sort of head nod to the restaurant industry from Kathryn Garcia to say, "I'm looking out for you too."

Yes, I did find it interesting that she was willing to go down that path of deregulating some of these Bloomberg era things. To the point you made earlier today, and that Liz said, I was honestly shocked that none of the candidates raised their hand when asked if school staff should get vaccinated. It was one of those moments that gave me pause, and I just stared at the screen and thought to myself like, "Well, if there's anyone that should probably be vaccinated it's people who work in schools that are surrounded by hundreds of other people in a closed space."

Who knows what the calculus is there? Whether they're trying to shore up support from the teachers union if, in fact, Scott Stringer doesn't win the Democratic primary, that might be up for grabs.

Brian Lehrer: We should say, I guess, since I noted before, that Stringer has the UofT endorsement, that doesn't mean that all teachers who are members are necessarily going to vote for him. There are many thousands of teachers, tens of thousands of teachers in the New York City public schools, and they're going to make their own decisions as individuals informed by the union, but not dictated to by the union. Maybe people just didn't want to alienate the teachers. On the health inspections, the city went to the length of putting those letter grades in the window of every restaurant in the city, A or B, or whatever the letter grade is.

I guess Ms. Garcia, and she may be right, I didn't have time to look up the statistics this morning for when she said people almost never get sick in New York City restaurants from the food they eat. Maybe she's right. The letter grades are there and maybe if they knew the inspectors were coming, it wouldn't make that much difference. I don't know. I will say one last thing that my producer Mary remembered and looked up on Garcia's website pertaining to her being one of the only two people who said that they would keep the SHSAT as the sole criterion for getting into the specialized high school.

She also touts what she calls the University of Texas top 10% model, which has built new schools for students in the top 10% of their eighth-grade class. This would be in addition to the SHSAT. She would keep, however, the SHSAT as the sole criteria for the specialized high schools. Well, we got through some of what we talked about with eight candidates in two hours last night. Josefa Velásquez one of the moderators last night senior reporter for the news organization THE CITY, and Elizabeth Kim, reporter for Gothamist covering the race. Thank you both so much.

 

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