NEW YORK (WCBS 880) – As early voting continues, Democratic candidates for New York City mayor shared a stage one last time on Wednesday night ahead of the Primary Day, which is less than a week away.
The debate, hosted by WNBC, remained mostly quiet and conventional for a race that’s been anything but.
Public safety remained a central focus. Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams responded to questions about his calls to return a controversial NYPD unit to the streets and bring back the limited use of stop-and-frisk.
“Let’s be clear. I don’t want to return to anything. I want to show how to use tools correctly,” Adams said.
Civil rights attorney Maya Wiley called Adams’ proposal on stop-and-frisk racist and unconstitutional.
“We are hiring police officers to do the job of social workers,” Wiley said.
Kathryn Garcia, a former city sanitation commissioner, continued to promote gun buybacks as a central part of her strategy, raising the payout to $2,000. But she did not address a question about whether that would just flood the city with more guns.
“I’m going to use every tool in the toolbox, including the gun buyback program, but also an expansion of the gun suppression division of the NYPD,” Garcia said.
Andrew Yang, a former presidential candidate and entrepreneur, was quick to mention a recent endorsement by the union that represents NYPD captains, who spurned their former colleague in Adams.
“People who know him best, they just endorsed me to be the next mayor of New York City. They think I’m a better choice than Eric to keep us and our families safe,” Yang said.
Adams claimed he never wanted the union's endorsement.
Candidates lower in the polls took a more impassioned approach. Former Citigroup executive Ray McGuire and former nonprofit executive Dianne Morales don’t see eye to eye on the issue of crime.
“Let’s be very clear for Black and brown communities, neither defund the police, nor stop-and-frisk, nor private security—” McGuire said as Morales interjected.
“You don’t speak for Black and brown communities. How dare you assume to speak for Black and brown communities as a monolith,” Morales said. “You cannot do that. You cannot do that.”
There were no redefining moments or major gaffes in the debate, but there was a lot of substantive discussion as voters look to parse through a race that has remained muddled into its final days.
Candidates were asked what they’d do differently to solve the long-standing issue of homelessness. Many of them emphasized the need for more affordable housing, including city Comptroller Scott Stringer.
“Any new development would set aside 25% for truly affordable housing. That’s part one. Part two is I would return thousands of vacant property that’s city-owned back to the people,” Stringer said.
Adams said the homeless need more than just a roof over their heads.
“Wrap-around services, supportive housing, building that trust between street homelessness and everyday New Yorkers, we can turn this problem around,” Adams said.
Yang took a more hardline approach, vowing to take the mentally ill off of the streets as a matter of public safety.
“I’m going to rebuild the stock of psych beds in our city, because the number’s gone down 14%. It should be going up 100%” Yang said.
But his answer caught some flak from Stringer and Morales.
“Mental illness and mental health challenges are not crimes,” Morales said.
Among the frontrunners, Yang and Adams faced most of the attacks over the course of the debate, while Garcia remained mostly unscathed. However, most of the attacks didn't seem to stick.
Asked to go big and name a signature project or development they’d look to see to fruition, the answers remained relatively benign. Some candidates focused on climate change and clean energy, including Garcia and former Obama housing secretary Shaun Donovan.
“We have to immediately have every school roof be a green roof that can absorb storm water and reduce the heat load,” Garcia said.
Donovan focused on wind energy.
“Just wind power alone, bringing the 21st century energy and infrastructure to our city, could benefit with more than 30,000 jobs to New Yorkers,” Donovan said.
Yang touted a linear park in Queens and water infrastructure.
“Whether it’s a new water tunnel to provide redundancy for drinking water in Brooklyn, because if the first water tunnel fails right now, can you imagine a scenario where there’s a borough without drinking water? Like that’s realistic right now. We have to remedy that,” Yang said.
Adams looked to cut down on red tape.
“We leave too much on the table, send too much to Washington, D.C. because we’re not allowing people to navigate the complexities of government,” Adam said.
Early voting in the primary continues through Sunday, ahead of Primary Day on Tuesday, June 22.
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