Five Things with Brian Lehrer: How This Election Runs on Hope, Fear and a Few Strange Alliances

Janae Pierre: Welcome to NYC Now. I'm Janae Pierre. Today, we're back with our monthly segment, Five Things with WNYC's Brian Lehrer. Hey, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Hey, Janae. Happy Halloween. Do you have candy for me?

Janae Pierre: Oh, no candy, but I'll be sweet. I'll be sweet. Listen, welcome back to the show.

Brian Lehrer: Here's a menu for this Five Things segment for your listeners, Janae. You ready?

Janae Pierre: I'm ready.

Brian Lehrer: One, it's a hope versus fear election. Two, watch Passaic County for a Trump midterm strategy. Three, strange bedfellows on the affordable housing ballot. Questions including Brian's two laws of affordable housing politics. Four, what is Curtis Sliwa thinking? Five, why grown-up politics should be more like middle school. I've got a cute but maybe humbling story from a friend with a seventh grader running for office in his school. You ready for number one, Janae?

Janae Pierre: Wow. Yes, absolutely. Let's jump into it. Hope versus fear.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, our hope versus fear election in the city. I start this one like this. Mamdani has the only real signature policies in this race. Free buses, free childcare, free is the rent. Grocery stores, city-run, everybody knows them, tax the rich, whether or not they support them. Can you name me even one new Cuomo signature policy? I'll bet that most of our listeners can't.

Janae Pierre: You know that's hard right now because I think you're really making a point here.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, he's running on fear Mamdani, especially fear him if you're Jewish. Fear him if you fear Trump taking over the city. Fear him enabling crime by minimizing the role of the police. Fear his inexperience as a manager. This is not even to say that hope is better than fear. Many Democrats, not so enthusiastic about Biden or Kamala Harris, let's say. Hillary Clinton still voted out of fear of Trump's impact on democracy and other things. Maybe that fear was justified in their view, at least, and reason enough to vote Democratic as things are turning out. It's hope versus fear.

Janae Pierre: Okay, let's go on to thing number two. You're saying that we should watch Passaic County for a possible Trump midterm strategy. Why Passaic County?

Brian Lehrer: Yes, Passaic County, New Jersey, north and west of the city, including Patterson and other immigrant-rich communities. Also Clifton, Pompton Lakes, West Milford. Also, places New Yorkers don't know how to pronounce when they see them in print, like Totowa and Wanaque. Anyway, the Trump Justice Department announced they will send an election monitor or a team of election monitors to Passaic during the gubernatorial election because local Republicans asked them to protect against fraud in mail-in ballots. Maybe this will be on the up and up. Or maybe it's part of a larger plan to start limiting whether people can vote by mail at all, anywhere, if they find some small infraction of some kind. Trump has wanted to do that, largely because it's Democrats more than Republicans who tend to use mail-in balloting. I'll be watching this aspect of the voting in Jersey.

Janae Pierre: Okay, thing number three, Brian, has me really intrigued. Strange bedfellows on the affordable housing ballot questions, including Brian's two laws of affordable housing politics. What are these laws, Brian?

Brian Lehrer: The two laws of affordable housing politics, according to me, that everyone in New York seems to agree on. One, we desperately need more affordable housing, and two, just don't build any near me. Does that sound about right to you, Janae?

Janae Pierre: Yes, yes, that's on point.

Brian Lehrer: That makes for some strange bedfellows on the affordable housing ballot questions. Did you know that Curtis Sliwa is on the same side as most of the progressive members of City Council?

Janae Pierre: Yes, that's what I've been hearing.

Brian Lehrer: Both want to defeat the three ballot questions that have to do with affordable housing. They're all designed to make housing construction easier to approve by giving City Council less power to stop them, and appointees of the mayor more power to approve. These strange fellow opponents have different reasons. Sliwa mostly represents more conservative suburban-style areas of the city with a lot of single-family homes, like much of Staten Island, parts of Northeast Queens, places like that.

They don't want more apartment buildings cluttering the openness, and in many cases, they don't want lower-income people of color, who they assume affordable housing units would bring, maybe affecting crime rates and property values as they imagine it. Those are the fears. The City Council progressives are more concerned about gentrification in lower-income neighborhoods from new housing that isn't affordable enough. As a matter of democracy, they don't like the mayor having more power and City Council having less, which these ballot measures would bring about.

The current council, for example, was definitely more progressive than Mayor Adams on most things. They didn't trust Mayor Adams getting this on the ballot in the first place. These were his idea. Supporters include other progressives like Comptroller Brad Lander, Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, and others who prioritize more affordable housing over community control to block it. They want to get around the "Just don't build any near me" part of those laws. It's complicated, but there are your strange bedfellows on the affordable housing ballot questions.

Questions two, three, and four. Remember, voters, to turn your ballots over to see them when you're done voting for candidates.

Janae Pierre: You mentioned Curtis Sliwa, and that's thing number four. What is Curtis Sliwa thinking these days?

Brian Lehrer: What is Curtis Sliwa thinking? Janae, I can usually think of a rational reason that politicians do the things they do, including Mayor Adams dropping out of his reelection bid when he did, and lots of other things, but why Republican mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa is staying in baffles me. Like most Republicans, he thinks Mamdani is a threat to his voters' interests, and he has practically a zero chance of winning. His presence in the race, splitting the non-Mamdani vote with Cuomo, almost ensures Mamdani will win.

Now, maybe even more baffling, Sliwa has quit the job he could have gone back to after the election, WABC radio talk show host, saying it's because they disrespected him in encouraging him to drop out. He's in effect helping Mamdani win and giving up his really good job to go back to assuming he loses. I don't even have a theory about what Curtis Sliwa is thinking.

Janae Pierre: I'm not even sure if that is a good move given this economy.

[laughter]

Brian Lehrer: If he wanted to stay in radio, I don't think we have any openings.

Janae Pierre: No, we definitely don't. Let's move on to thing number five. Why grown-up politics should be more like middle school. I can't even imagine going back to middle school, Brian, but what?

Brian Lehrer: Right. Certainly, we don't want much from those tortured years of so many people's lives to follow us into adulthood. Here's a little story. I have a friend whose son, in seventh grade, is currently running for student body vice president at his public middle school in Queens. Last weekend, the mom showed me the Kids' 1.5-minute candidate video. All the candidates had to make one. It was very cute for one thing, but it was also impressive, and I was impressed that this-- I think he's 12-- 12-year-old was running a totally positive campaign.

It was all about his accomplishments in student government so far and what he hopes to do if elected vice president. No attacks on his competitors. When I said that to the mom, she told me, "Oh, that's the rule. You can't attack the other kids in these elections." It made me think maybe grown-up politics should be more like middle school. Imagine if the mayoral candidates were only allowed to campaign on what they hope to accomplish and how, rather than treating the other guy as scary or as a bum, maybe voters would be prompted to be more thoughtful and less driven by just having their buttons pressed.

I know it's unrealistic, but it's the first time in my life I ever thought the grown-up life should be more like middle school, so there you go.

Janae Pierre: [chuckles] That's pretty cool. That's WNYC's Brian Lehrer. Thanks a lot, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you, Janae.

Janae Pierre: Thank you for listening to NYC Now from WNYC. I'm Janae Pierre. I'm headed out to early vote. Maybe you should, too. Have a good weekend.

[music]

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.