Top NYC mayoral contenders trade barbs as race enters homestretch
With just five days left for voters to cast their ballots, the top contenders for mayor continued to roll out reasons why New Yorkers should vote for them Friday, with Eric Adams, Kathryn Garcia, Andrew Yang and Maya Wiley trading barbs over each others’ records and plans.
Brooklyn Borough President Adams remains the race’s frontrunner in recent polls, but Garcia, the city’s former sanitation commisioner; Yang, a tech entrepreneur; and Wiley, Mayor de Blasio’s former legal counsel, continue to be within striking distance.
Adams, a former NYPD captain, went on the offensive early Friday.
He made his case on Hot 97 radio and at an anti-violence rally in Harlem, where he announced the endorsement of Leandra Feliz, the mother of 15-year-old Lesandro “Junior” Guzman-Feliz, whose murder in the Bronx rocked the city three years ago.
On Hot 97′s Ebro in the Morning, Adams fielded questions about his stance on stop and frisk — he backs its continued use, but has said he’d guard carefully against it being abused — and noted Friday that he fought hard against it years ago.
But the show’s host Ebro Darden voiced skepticism that the NYPD can employ stop and frisk without abusing it.
“You’re right. What does that require then? It requires a mayor that understands how to go after those abusive cops. It requires a mayor who’s bold enough to say we’re going to make you use your cameras anytime you interact with the public,” Adams said. “Someone that understands the system of policing — no one’s running for mayor that understands that. They’re going to run rings around these cats, brother.”
Adams then attacked Wiley for making calls to strip the NYPD of $1 billion in funding, but he also vowed not to increase the number of cops the NYPD employs.
“I’m saying that clearly and definitively,” Adams said.
He went after Yang as well — calling him “New Paltz Andrew Yang,” in reference to his rival’s time in the upstate town at the height of the pandemic — saying he’s employed “lies and fraud” in making accusations that Adams lives in New Jersey.
“They’re saying, what, a Black man can’t own two homes?” Adams said. “[Yang] owns two, so why can’t I? This learning disability, bald-headed, ex-arrested CUNY grad is now at the top of the mayor’s race. That’s pissing some folks off, brothers.”
Adams has noted on the campaign trail that as a kid he struggled with a learning disability.
Yang, who received an endorsement Friday from Queens Borough President candidate Liz Crowley, also didn’t pull any punches.
He slammed Adams over a story in New York magazine that explored his rival’s connections to Frank Carone, a Brooklyn lawyer with ties to shady real estate moguls and free access to Mayor de Blasio.
“We all know that politics as usual is not working. Just last night, what came out? A story about Bill de Blasio — his lobbyist, who’s now trying to help get Eric Adams elected,” Yang said.
“This is not the sort of administration that we need a third term of, am I right? No one wants to see a third term of Bill de Blasio. We need to break the stranglehold of the special interests that have been running our city into the ground.”
Garcia, who shook hands with voters Friday in Park Slope and snagged endorsements from Councilman Jim Gennaro and former state Sen. Tom Duane, tried to remain above the fray, though.
When asked why she hadn’t piled on Adams, Yang or Wiley as she moves into the race’s final days, Garcia said it’s because voters “do not want that.”
“They want you to solve their problems. Everywhere I go, that’s what I hear. Get my kids back in school, keep me safe, get the economy open,” she explained. “That’s what they’re talking about. Not anything else. And it’s like, what am I going to do? Get into, like, did Eric pay his taxes? I assume the IRS will get into that.”
Adams has come under fire over questions of whether he properly paid his taxes. His campaign maintains that some of the issues he’s faced stem from an accountant’s errors and that he plans to amend his forms with the IRS.
Wiley received an endorsement from Kirsten John Foy, the northeast regional director of Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network, and both of them went after all three of Wiley’s top rivals during a rally at Brooklyn’s Grand Army Plaza.
“Eric Adams has said — and he said it a year ago, and he’s said it on this campaign trail — that he would bring back stop-and-frisk,” Wiley said.
Stop and frisk, though, remains in use by the NYPD.
Wiley has accused Adams of wanting to bring back the NYPD’s aggressive use of the tool as it existed under Mayor Michael Bloomberg, which Adams has denied.
Despite that, Foy attempted to tar not only Adams with stop and frisk, but Garcia and Yang as well.
“We’ve got to call out these wolves in sheep’s clothing,” he said. “I am borderline enraged and righteously indignant at the candidacy of Eric Adams, the candidacy of Kathryn Garcia and the candidacy of Andrew Yang, in particular... We are never returning to stop-and-frisk. Ever.”
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