NEW YORK (WCBS 880) — Candidates for New York City mayor have been hitting the campaign trail hard this week as the city approaches the June primary that will likely decide the November election.
Among the top contenders for mayor as former New York City Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia, Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams and former presidential candidate Andrew Yang.
This week, a poll put Garcia ahead of the others, but that didn't stop Yang from picking up another key endorsement from State Senator Jon Liu this week.
The former presidential candidate has also amassed support from the Asian American community throughout the city, including Queens Congresswoman Grace Meng.
WCBS 880’s Lynda Lopez spoke with Yang this week about his campaign, and specifically about the rise in gun violence and crime in New York City, which he recently labeled a “mental health crisis.”
He told Lopez that as mayor, he hopes to get the crime surge under control.
“Public safety is the number one issue,” he said. “And the fact is, nothing is going to work if people aren't safe walking our own neighborhoods, taking the subway, so we need to attack this as a public health emergency and crisis. I have proposed a new anti-violence and community safety unit, that would be focused on reducing gun violence starting in the communities that have been the hardest hit. And we would use something called ‘Focused Deterrence,’ which is when you have community leaders and people in the neighborhoods identify folks that they think our trouble.”
He said once those people have been identified, law officials and community leaders can “sit down with them and say, ‘Look if something happens in this community, we're gonna come to you first.’”
“This has been shown to reduce levels of gun violence. I believe that having police officers in these communities working hand-in-hand with the folks who live there, who know the community best, is the way that we can get the guns out and the violence down,” Yang said.
Even with his plans, as more New Yorkers start paying attention to the mayor's race, it seems as though the candidates with more government experience are gaining momentum and support.
Yang, a tech entrepreneur who garnered national name recognition during his failed 2020 presidential run, has been towards the top of the polls throughout the campaign, but new surveys show his support slipping.
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Lopez asked Yang what he would say to voters who may be indicating they want a mayor with more experience to lead the city, to which he responded that he has plenty of executive experience from his tech career.
“What I'd say to them is that I've run a business here in New York City that grew to become very significant and if you've interacted with a small business here in New York, you know there are no excuses, you have to deliver results, people don't care about politics, and that's what we want from our government right now. We want someone who's just going to deliver, who doesn't people favors going back 10, 12 years – because they've been planning this run for decades. We just want our city to work better for us, whether that's cleaner streets, safer streets, businesses that are open, schools that are serving our kids. We can do better and that's why there's so much excitement around this campaign… This is a campaign for the people and supported by the people and not the special interests who've been running our government – and our city, unfortunately – into the ground for far too long,” Yang said.
Early voting in the New York City primaries begin Saturday, June 12.
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