Thread by @daveweigel

“The first thing I’d do as mayor us go to our police force and say, this city needs you,” Andrew Yang says in #NYCMayor debate. “Defund the police is the wrong approach.”

Eric Adams’s answer focuses on restoring the plainclothes units disbanded last year after George Floyd to deal with gangs and the “real pervasive handgun problem.”

Morales says if more money for police meant safety, NYC would already be the safest city in American; “address the systems and not the symptoms.”

Wiley would shift $1 billion from NYPD budget and invest in “trauma-informed care” in schools, policy she introduced last month.

Asked if they would send more police into subways, only Stringer, Miley, and Morales don’t raise hands. Wiley and Stringer they should be investing in mental health professionals; Morales touts her “community first responders” plan.

“We need to respond when the MTA says we need more cops in the subway,” Garcia says.

Question never gets back to Adams and Yang.

On economic comeback question, Garcia emphasizes that she’d Marie business permitting easier, “so you don’t have to go to eight agencies before you sell a bowl of soup.”

Wiley talks about creating a 100,000 jobs plan with expanded construction, overseen by a “New Deal Czar.” McGuire talks about a 500,000 jobs goal and a plan to supplement the salaries of 50k small biz workers: “Go big go small go forward.”

Yang talks about his People’s Bank bug says the “biggest way we can get our jobs back” is bringing tourism back. “People are less likely to visit a city that doesn’t seem safe.”

Morales: End corporate welfare and invest the money in small businesses. Pushed on what she’d do quickly, says immediate financial assistance. “Build back our city in a new and different way that takes care of everyone.”

45 minutes in, the first attack on a rival comes from… Donovan, attacking McGuire, the Citi exec who also botched the Brooklyn housing question. “No one has that experience of really making sure we come back, especially from a crisis you helped create.”

“It’s always interesting to hear men say that they have all the experience,” Wiley says after McGuire hits back at Donovan.

Stringer talks about standing up to de Blasio and telling him to cut waste from outside contractors and doing “real work in the midst of a pandemic.”

Asked for a regulation they’d get rid of, Adam’s says “take down the rules around signage.” Wiley says she’d do same and give businesses $30 million to clear their fines. Garcia says get rid of surprise health inspections (“they can schedule them”).

Morales says she’d add Arab business owners to minority-owned grant program, Stringer would reform dept of buildings, Yang would cap delivery fees, McGuire says “the regulation with building outdoor restaurants.”

Yang gets the question about his voting record, says that he’s not a person who thinks NY’s ingenuity comes from government agencies, and that he’s always voted for president. Told that he didn’t vote in 2000, Yang says he thinks he did.

Adams gets annoyed when Yang says he helped flipped the Georgia Senate seats, suggesting he’s stealing valor from black women.

“That is disrespectful and appalling to Stacey Abrams and those black women on the ground.”

Yang says he raised millions for the Georgia races and helped turn out the Asian vote; “full credit to Stacey” but other people are allowed to get some credit.

Adams, on his brief period as a Republican and his New York Post endorsement: “President Obama was endorsed by the Post and he was one of the greatest presidents we’ve ever had.”

Wiley says Adams is misleading people, and had described himself as a conservative Republican. “You actually said that Rudy Giuliani was better than David Dinkins.”

Stringer once again denies sexual misconduct accusation, compares it to “the Biden-Tara Reade situation,” in that women should be heard but this isn’t true.

Wiley, asked if she bears any responsibility for de Blasio failures, says she doesn’t. “I quit five years ago. I voted with my feet.”

Donovan is pressed on how his father is funding a supportive PAC, even though he’s taking matching funds. He says that Stringer had 37 such outside groups helping him in 2013.

“Don’t bring me into your daddy problems,” Stringer says.

Morales says that Adams insulted the “black organizers of all ages who’ve been leading” the defund the police movement when he said it was led by white people; Adams says he was talking about the “disband movement.”

“What’s the disband movement?” she says.

Adams says he meant anarchists in places like Portland.

Apart from that Morales Q, this round of candidates asking each other questions has been friendly, prompting each other to discuss policy. Fun things happen in ranked choice elections

That’s over now, with Wiley going after Adams for supporting stop and frisk. “As a civil rights lawyer, all I can say is that there was nothing okay about it.”

Adams says Wiley is showing her ignorance of policing, Wiley says she “certainly understands misconduct,” having chaired the Civilian Complaint Review Board.

“I certainly know how much of a failure it was under you,” Adams says.

McGuire goes after Yang for saying Venture for America may not have been “the best fit” for black applicants.

“My administration would reflect the incredible diversity of our city,” says Yang, arguing that Venture for America actually increased diversity in the tech sector.

Yang is pressed on whether he regrets saying VFA wasn’t the best fit for black applicants, starts to explain a possible context, then says “I genuinely don’t remember making that statement.”

Donovan goes after Yang for “hiding behind” his White House recognitions to defend his business career, saying one was about “promise, not results.” Then goes after Adams for saying he’d carry a gun as mayor.

Morales catches Donovan denying a quote he’d said. “Feisty!” says Adams.

Adams and Stringer the only candidates who say they’d keep all-virtual school as an option in the fall

Garcia talks about raising rental assistant so it’s enough to actually afford rent with, “for those of us who knew the answer to that question.” Only mention so far of the NYT interview debacle for Donovan/McGuire

Some funny answers to a question about what the candidates will do when everything’s open. Stringer: “After this campaign I’m going to take my wife to any Broadway show she wants.”

Candidates asked who their voters should rank number two. McGuire: “What Kathryn Garcia has done here is, uh, respectable.”