West Side Rag » The Race for the Next NYC Mayor is On; West Side Democrats Got an

Posted on November 13, 2020 at 9:21 pm by West Sider

Photo via Mayor’s Office.

By Amelia Roth-Dishy

With the presidential election limping to its conclusion, New Yorkers can finally focus on a race closer to home: the 2021 NYC mayoral election. The Upper West Side played digital host to the first neighborhood-based mayoral forum of this election cycle on Thursday night as eight Democratic candidates for the city’s highest elected office pleaded their case. The Zoom event, organized by the West Side Democrats, had an unusual yet effective format. Each candidate received six minutes to speak uninterrupted, followed by three minutes of questions generated from the 300+ audience members.

The imperative for mayoral hopefuls to sell their extended elevator pitch is uniquely heightened this year, not just by the fiscal and social crises facing the city during a pandemic but by the introduction of ranked-choice voting to New Yorkers’ ballots. A ranked-choice voting system requires voters to rank candidates in order of preference, with the election turning to a multi-phase elimination process in the event that no candidate receives over 50% of the first place votes. As such, even second- or third-choice votes are worth fighting for.

Most of the race’s notable Democratic candidates spoke on Tuesday, including Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, former Office of Management and Budget director Shaun Donovan, former NYC Dept. of Sanitation commissioner Kathryn Garcia, City Council Member Carlos Menchaca, non-profit executive Dianne Morales, Comptroller Scott Stringer, former NYC Dept. of Veteran Services Commissioner Loree Sutton, and civil rights attorney and former de Blasio advisor Maya Wiley. Ray McGuire, a Citigroup executive running with significant support from the business community, was notably absent.

While the event had no explicit theme or direct dialogue between candidates, a handful of topics stood out over the course of the night. Almost every candidate addressed issues of housing and homelessness in the city, highlighting plans for increased affordable housing and wraparound social services.

Donovan, the former secretary of Housing and Urban Development under President Obama and Bloomberg’s HPD Commissioner, stated that “we can reimagine the right to shelter in New York City as a right to housing.”

Council Member Menchaca, whose district includes Sunset Park and Red Hook, referenced his work in securing two new 100% affordable housing projects for his constituents. “Those are the kinds of things that I want to do as mayor,” he said, “is to really think about how we bring the resources of the capital budget so that we can bring affordability, true affordability, to our communities.”

A number of candidates fielded questions about a New York City land bank, which Comptroller Stringer’s office proposed in 2016. Stringer reaffirmed his commitment to building affordable housing through community partnerships on city-owned land and also advocated for a 25% affordability requirement in as-of-right developments (most as-of-right developments today don’t have to provide affordable housing). “We’ve done this before,” he said. “We have to go back into the housing business as a city.” Donovan supported the idea, calling land banks “a critically important example of the ways that we can ensure public ownership of land.”

Candidates generally tiptoed around the tense neighborhood debate about the Lucerne and using hotels as shelters for unhoused New Yorkers. In response to a question about mitigating NIMBY-ism, Wiley, the former chair of the Civilian Complaint Review Board, said, “I think it starts from a very engaged process with residents, both that’s transparent about what we’re doing, why we’re doing it, and ensures that every community does its part, because that’s what being a city and working together means.”

Sutton, a retired…