Why aren't progressives winning City Hall? (#14)
NYC's progressive flank of mayoral hopefuls is a bit of a mess.
On Saturday, New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez made a surprise announcement: she had chosen to endorse Maya Wiley, a civil rights lawyer and former Counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio, in New York City’s mayoral race.
It’s possibly the most coveted endorsement a progressive candidate like Wiley could ask for and, though it wasn’t a total surprise in some ways, well, it was. Mostly because of what it likely signifies beyond just AOC’s approval of Wiley: the city’s progressives aren’t doing so hot in the race for City Hall. A series of scandals — mostly plaguing Wiley rivals Scott Stringer and Dianne Morales — and a weird aversion to coalition-building among the candidates are some of the reasons why.
Earlier this year, when the pace of the mayoral race was just picking up, many speculated that AOC would opt to stay out of it, following the playbook of the city’s establishment party players. But now that she’s announced who she’s backing for the City Hall job — with just a week before early voting and two weeks before the June 22 primaries — it seems the mayoral race became too contentious for her to sit out, especially considering how poorly things have been going for the progressive candidates.
There are around 19+ candidates actively running for mayor on the Democrat side, but only eight are widely seen as having the best chances of winning (still, 15 candidates will appear on the primary election ballot).
Out of the most visible candidates, three are touted as the choices for progressive voters: Scott Stringer, Maya Wiley, and Dianne Morales. And while these three could have worked together and mobilized support from the city’s hungry progressive base to take advantage of the new ranked-choice voting system — which allows voters to rank up to five candidates for the same seat based on their preference — their performances have been less than spectacular, paving the way for more moderate candidates like Andrew Yang and Eric Adams to dominate the race so far.
The first problem is that both Stringer and Morales’ campaigns have been saddled with scandals. Allegations of sexual harassment by two different women who worked with Stringer — initially positioned as the strongest progressive with endorsements from entities like the United Federation of Teachers and the Working Families Party — have muddied his campaign with a trail of rescinded endorsements.
Then, a week after news broke of Stringer’s first accuser, it was ex-nonprofit executive Morales’ turn to be in the spotlight. Local news outlet The City reported on a bribery case she had been involved in when she was under contract with the Department of Education. The report revealed that Morales, who is the owner of a brownstone in Bedford-Stuyvesant, had her father pay off an inspector from the Department of Environmental Protection to bury a $12,500 water bill.
While the report suggests Morales may have been victim to an extortion plot by the inspector, the DOE’s Special Commissioner of Investigation, who investigated the bribery scheme, recommended the DOE terminate Morales’ employment, noting she had changed her story to the investigator multiple times before finally confessing that she had her father bribe the DEP inspector. The City also stated the bribery investigation came up during a standard background check for Morales’ appointment as chair of the city’s Equal Employment Practices Commission, a watchdog for diversity hiring within city agencies, and Morales was later pulled from consideration.
But wait — there’s more! A week after the bribery story came out, Morales’ camp received another hit: a number of her senior staff quit over internal discord within the campaign. Later, some of her campaign staff left abruptly to form a union — 28 days before Election Day primaries — citing mistreatment and abusive behavior, particularly toward staffers of color. The group also alleged Morales had deliberately fired four of the union’s elected leaders, though Morales said it was an unrelated staffing decision by her campaign. The scandals pummeled Morales’ campaign, which had already been polling in the low single-digits.
Even without the issues plaguing Stringer’s and Morales’ campaigns, the three progressive mayoral hopefuls also seemed unwilling to play nice together. The polls stayed roughly the same all season: Yang and Adams in the lead followed by Stringer, with the rest of the first tier candidates lagging behind. For the progressive base to get a leg up in the race, the most obvious play would’ve been for Stringer, the progressive candidate who was performing the best, to consolidate votes from Wiley and Morales, who weren’t polling so well but boasted pretty strong grassroots support.
This seemed like a possibility in January when Sen. Gustavo Rivera of the Bronx came out as one of the first legislators to co-endorse more than one candidate in the spirit of ranked-choice voting, choosing Stringer as his #1 and Morales as his #2 choices. While Stringer made it clear during the announcement that the candidates weren't co-endorsing each other, he didn't completely shut down the idea of working together with Morales, keeping the possibility of a coalition open.
But a lot has changed since. While Stringer’s poll numbers held steady after the sexual harassment allegations, some disenchanted voters may peel off to other candidates, presenting the perfect opportunity for Wiley and Morales to team up and sweep those votes through a so-called “unity ticket” for the progressives.
However, that seems unrealistic this close to the election as neither woman appears willing to play second fiddle to the other. With ranked-choice voting in play for the first time, candidates are frequently asked by media and debate moderators about who they intend to rank as #2 on their ballot — essentially, who besides themselves would they endorse as a viable candidate. Wiley and Morales had both previously named each other as their #2 choices, during a candidate forum in February. But by mid-May, Morales had changed her answer, declining to offer anyone as a second choice.
A handful of slights by Wiley (see here and here) and allegations of union-busting and abuse inside Morales’ campaign make it even more unlikely the two will form a united campaign in order to feed each other votes. Last week, Wiley also dropped Morales as her #2 choice, instead refusing to give an answer during the race’s first in-person debate.
But if anything, the problems that have rocked Stringer’s and Morales’ campaigns could end up benefiting Wiley, who’s now essentially considered the only viable (read: unproblematic) progressive candidate left in the race (if you want to learn more about Wiley’s candidacy, here’s a fantastic profile by political writer Rebecca Traister, still one of the best write-ups on Wiley, IMO).
Progressive voters peeling away from Stringer and Morales will most likely be heading toward Wiley as their new #1 choice. Wiley could also see some #YangGangers list her as their #2 pick since she’s the only candidate in the race that hasn’t distanced herself from Yang, who’s been the one to beat (she was also the only candidate to call out the racism in a cartoon depicting Yang as a slanted-eye “tourist” by the New York Daily News, which I predict has endeared her to some of his supporters and Asian voters).
While Wiley has stopped short of forming a unity ticket with others, she hasn’t outright alienated anyone (except Adams), either. That helps a lot with cross-campaign appeal in an election with ranked-choice voting, which is likely why Yang’s been blowing up Kathryn Garcia's phone despite polling ahead of the pack in the early stages of the campaign season.
As one top Democratic strategist bluntly put it:
“It feels like a lot of New York’s political class doesn’t understand how ranked-choice works. In other states and cities, the alliances would have already formed and the coordinated attacks would be happening. Time is running out.”
Wiley has racked up a few formidable endorsements, now the only candidate endorsed by the Working Families Party (which dropped both Stringer and Morales from its co-endorsements); The Jewish Vote, the voter engagement arm of a progressive Jewish coalition; and Local 1199 of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the largest union in the city, just to name a few.
She’s also gotten the stamp of approval from progressive stalwarts like New York’s Rep. Jamaal Bowman and ex-presidential candidates Sen. Elizabeth Warren and former Secretary Julián Castro just in the last few days. But you have to wonder, if Stringer’s and Morales’ campaigns hadn’t publicly imploded as they did, would Wiley have been getting all this last-minute support?
More importantly, is it enough to push her through to the top?
The most recent mayoral poll by NY1 shows more of the same: Adams now polling at 22% ahead of Yang (16%) and Garcia (15%), who’s gained momentum in the last month following endorsements from the New York Times and the New York Daily News, while the rest of the pack, including the three progressives, are trailing behind. Wiley, unfortunately, is still polling at about 9% as she was before.
It’s unfortunate that progressives stayed fractured through the race. I think they missed an opportunity to build a ground-swell left-of-center coalition that would’ve benefited all three candidates. Now, New York City could end up with another moderate — or even conservative-like — mayor as it has for the last three decades (and, no, de Blasio doesn’t count). But who knows, with ranked-choice voting and more big names showing up to back Wiley in the last stretch before the primaries, anything could happen. We’ll have to wait and see.
🚨 FRIENDLY REMINDER 🚨 Early voting for New York City’s primary elections starts June 12 to June 20 so, New Yorkers, save the date! 🗳️ 🗽
Need to brush up on who to rank on your ballot? Check out my round-up of guides on the mayoral candidates.
WHAT THE FUDGE IS GOING ON WITH KYRSTEN SINEMA
One of the most contentious debates happening right now, both among Democrats and across party lines, is about getting rid of the filibuster in Congress. There have been a handful of politicians who’ve consistently been smack dab in the middle of these debates, one of them is Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, who has been criticized by fellow Democrats over her refusal to vote in favor of wiping away the filibuster.
The filibuster is an old Senate rule that established a 60-vote threshold in order for any major legislation to pass Congress. Proponents of the filibuster say it’s a tool to maintain bipartisanship, but some political historians argue that the filibuster is an archaic system with a history that’s rooted in white supremacy, mainly used by white conservative Congressmembers to block major civil rights bills since the Jim Crow era.
Now, here’s a little bit about Sen. Sinema: she’s been in public office since 2005 when she was first elected as a state representative in Arizona. Since then, she’s climbed up the ladder to become a Democratic senator serving in Congress and became one of the most visible LGBTQ members of Congress after she came out as bisexual. Her elevated profile as an openly queer woman and her penchant for dressing up led Elle magazine to dub her “America’s most colorful Congresswoman.”
While Sinema gained national cred as a liberal, almost-progressive firebrand — with a background growing up homeless and a career as a social worker — somewhere along the way, she began flouting hard-centrist leanings. Her ideological shift seemingly happened around the same time she launched and won her bid for the U.S. Senate in 2018 when she started affiliating with a small group of moderate Democrats.
A closer look at her politics recently shows she may be one of the more centrist Democrats in the Senate. She was absent from voting on the Jan. 6 commission to investigate the Capitol insurrection and, this month, she held a joint press conference with Sen. John Cornyn (TX-R) to defend the filibuster which she described as “a tool that protects the democracy of our nation.”
Sinema’s ideological shift wouldn’t be such a big deal if it weren’t for the slim majority the Democrats hold in the Senate: 50 Republicans and 48 Democrats with 2 Independents caucusing with the Dems.
As one of the more centrist Democrats, aligning herself with Democrat Lite poster boy Sen. Joe Manchin (WV-D), Sinema holds considerable power in the Senate. Democrats need all the votes they can get to pass ambitious legislation, like the sweeping voting rights bill known as the For the People Act, which the New York Times described as “the most substantial expansion of voting rights in a half-century,” due to their slim majority.
But with Sinema and Manchin creating roadblocks — Manchin opposes the voting rights bill while both are against getting rid of the filibuster — the two are basically holding fellow Democrats hostage, and making themselves op targets within their own party. Sinema’s extreme centrism has spurred conspiracy theories, including speculation that the two are being funded by Republican donors. My theory is that you should never trust someone who spells their first name like that.
What do you think is behind this nonsense? Leave your thoughts in the comments!
TWEET OF THE WEEK
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GET CAUGHT UP WITH THESE LINKS
🔥 The Nigerian government banned Twitter after the social network deleted an inflammatory tweet by the president (wow, I’m getting deja vu). Now, citizens and a rights group are suing the government. | Al Jazeera
🔥 A socialist teacher is going head-to-head against the daughter of Peru’s authoritarian ex-president in the country’s presidential elections, narrowly leading in votes counted so far. Watch the report here. | France 24
🔥 The new football jerseys of Ukraine’s national team are renewing geopolitical tensions between the country and Russia, and Western allies. | Yahoo News
🔥 A brief history of billionaires going to space as “space tourists.” | Slate
🔥 How humanity’s evolution from social drinking to solo binging unexpectedly led to the juxtaposion of America’s prohibition and its excessive drinking culture. | The Atlantic
🔥 Backlash over the sloppy handling of a true crime production about the murder of Vincent Chin, who was beaten to death in a hate crime killing, highlights the genre’s lawlessness and who gets to capitalize off Asian American trauma. | Jezebel
🔥 A military veteran’s speech was censored during his elaboration of Memorial Day’s founding by Black veterans at a veterans group chapter event. One leader resigned after the veterans group threatened to disband the entire chapter. | The Washington Post
🖊️ My piece on how city agencies and local organizations are hoping to get more people to vote in the crucial New York City elections this year, the city’s largest government turnover that’s happened in a decade. | Village Voice
🖊️ I spoke with New York City’s ‘Chief Democracy Officer’ Laura Wood about her office’s $15 million voter initiative, the debates over ranked-choice voting, and what a democratic city actually looks like. | City & State NY
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Until the next newsletter,
Natasha