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Recapping the Republican Mayoral Debate

WNYC and partners will co-host the first GOP mayoral primary debate

Jeff Coltin, senior reporter at City & State and co-author of the campaign confidential newsletter, recaps the Republican mayoral debate -- which will feature the only two candidates, Fernando Mateo and Curtis Sliwa.

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Last night I wanted to watch the Knicks playoff game. Maybe the knickerbockers would win their first postseason game in eight years, but I couldn't watch the first half because I was one of the questioners in the New York City Republican mayoral primary debate between Guardian Angels founder and talk show host Curtis Sliwa and restaurant owner and taxi drivers advocate, Fernando Mateo, that debate heard here on WNYC, and seen on TV on NY1. I did watch the second half of the game and we'll talk about the resurgence of the New York Knicks later in the show, but what I can tell you now is this.

There were more flagrant fouls committed in the debate than in the basketball game. Here are just a few seconds, because we don't want to torture you, of what it sounded like a lot of the time, including NY1's Errol Lewis as the referee trying to break them up.

Fernando Mateo: You're a character that's never worked for a living, you've lived off of the Guardian Angel your whole. You don't even know how to go out there and work to make money. Come on. [crosstalk] Please, you're not a Republican. That's the bottom line.

Brian Lehrer: There was all that, and those kinds of exchanges are what's made the headlines this morning. New York Times, GOP rivals trade insults in chaotic New York City mayoral debate. New York Post, debate between Sliwa and Mateo a slugfest right from the start. Gothamist, Cheap shots, props, and who won the 2020 presidential election? You get the idea. By the way, referring to that Gothamist headline, thank you Gothamist for noticing that one of the candidates was all in with a big lie about the presidential election and the other was not. Here's that moment. This clip begins with my question. Do either of you think that President Trump actually won reelection? Curtis do you?

Curtis Sliwa: No.

Brian Lehrer: Mr. Mateo?

Fernando Mateo: I think he won re-election? Yes, I do.

Brian Lehrer: You might say this was a debate between a conspiracy theorist and a political media clown and yet we have to take this at least somewhat seriously because before Bill de Blasio, the city had republican mayors for 20, straight years. Two terms of Rudy Giuliani, followed by three terms of Mike Bloomberg. Both candidates do have positions on many, many issues, as we've learned last night, and they have experience in or around the political sector. We'll play some more excerpts now. Joining me to help break it all down is Jeff Coltin, senior political reporter at the news organization City and State, and co-author of their newsletter, Campaign Confidential. Jeff, thanks for coming on. Welcome back to WNYC.

Jeff Coltin: My pleasure. I will do my best to keep it a little bit calmer, a little bit more level headed than the debate last night, I couldn't believe that Fernando Mateo actually met Curtis Sliwa's energy level. I thought that one of them would try and be a little more, I don't know, straightforward. A little more level headed.

Brian Lehrer: Well, I guess they think it's the route to more Republican primary votes. Let's start with the clip that we just played. The national media reports a lot on loyalty to Trump defining rank and file Republican America right now. Do you think it matters in a republican mayoral primary in New York City that one candidate is willing to buy into Trump's election fantasy and the other one is not?

Jeff Coltin: Well, if we're talking about the mayoral primary, then yes, I think that polling and just the general support of Republicans across the country has shown that this is a widely held belief among loyal Republican voters, that Trump actually did win the election that there was some sort of fraud. We know this isn't true. I wasn't too surprised when Mateo said that he believed that Trump won the election. By the way, there is a difference here. Mateo says that he did vote for Donald Trump in 2016 and again at 2020. Whereas Curtis Sliwa says he did not vote for Trump in either election.

I think he said he wrote somebody in 2020. He definitely didn't vote for Biden, but he also did not vote for Trump. Like everything, Donald Trump is a part of this Republican debate. Yes, I think it helps in the primary. Of course, it will absolutely not help in the general election.

Brian Lehrer: We're going to get to electability for November as we go but listeners Did you watch or listen to the Republican mayoral debate last night. Registered Republicans, you're the only ones who get to vote in this primary. If you're a New York City registered Republican, give us a call at 646-435-7280, or tweet @BrianLehrer. Anyone else may call too, with your questions or impressions. 646-435-7280, or tweet @BrianLehrer with Jeff Coltin from the news organization, City and State. Now, by way of background, before we play more clips, and Democrats in New York you may not realize it, but Trump got 23% of the vote in New York City last year or around 690,000 votes according to the published statistics.

He actually did about four points better last year than he did in 2016 in the city and, hey, 690,000 votes is 690,000 votes, even though Biden got 2.3 million. Jeff, who are these 690,000 New York City Trump voters, geographically and demographically speaking, in the city?

Jeff Coltin: Sure. I guess the first number to point out is that there's only about 500,000 registered Republicans in the city of New York. That's opposed to 3.5 million Democrats. There's about a seven to one difference of Democrats to Republicans, however, there are about a million independent voters. If Trump garnered, what was it, 690,000 votes, that's more than just Republicans. He got a good portion of independants and I'm sure he also got a fair number of Democratic voters as well, most likely. Geographically, we know that there's of course Staten Island is a Republican stronghold. However, actually, there are more registered Democrats than Republicans on Staten Island.

That said, Republicans vote more and usually win the island. A lot of Southern Brooklyn, very strong Trump support, particularly in Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods. We saw some of the strongest support for Donald Trump in the city. Of course, parts of Queens, maybe the western end of the Rockaway Peninsula, and some of the more suburban areas, northeast Queens. Of course, one story that we saw with the 2020 election particularly was that Trump did significantly better among Latino voters, particularly in heavily Latino areas of the Bronx.

The Democrats still very much, Biden himself and just Democrats in general, still win way more votes in the Latino community than the Republicans but Trump's increase there was notable and that is actually a part of Fernando Mateo's pitch here. Mateo is a Dominican immigrant and he is saying that he is more electable than Sliwa because he has more crossover appeal, because there are Hispanic voters out there who would be willing to support him, willing to support a Republican, which isn't necessarily true for Curtis Sliwa.

Brian Lehrer: It perfectly sets up this next clip, because if a Republican has a snowball's chance of winning in November, he'll have to win the support of a lot of people who did vote for Biden. Last night, I asked the Republican candidates this electability question, "Who would have the better shot at winning crossover voters, Democrats and independents?" Curtis Sliwa answered first by referencing that he has better poll numbers so far than Mateo and then-

Curtis Sliwa: More importantly, I have now two separate lines in the general election. In addition to the Republican line, an independent line and the animal welfare line, the no-kill shelter line. That's going to provide not only Democrats but independents, others who would never vote for a Republican two opportunities to vote for me. Let's be honest, when it comes to animal welfare and protecting our beloved cats and dogs, let's face it that brings Trumpists together with those who voted for Biden, with those who are not involved in politics. It's going to give a lot of people an opportunity to look at me as someone who can be a mayor of all the people of New York City, and that's what I'll be able to do.

Brian Lehrer: Mr. Mateo, same question. Why would you be the more actually electable one in November?

Fernando Mateo: Well, first of all, Curtis is not electable in the general election, and that's why he's running as a Republican. Democrats want him to win because if he wins, they know that they have a clear path to City Hall. Fernando Mateo's the only Republican candidate that can bring over a half a million Democratic voters to vote for him. I did it for Michael Bloomberg I delivered the votes, the Hispanic votes that he needed to win the mayoralship of New York City. There were 2.5 million Hispanics in New York that dislike Curtis Sliwa.

Brian Lehrer: They went on from there, and it got less courteous from there, as has been well reported about what it sounded like last night. Let's take a phone call. We have more clips to play from the debate. Here is Lee, a registered Republican on Staten Island. Lee, you're on WNYC, thank you so much for calling in today.

Lee: You're welcome, Brian, and thanks for doing that last night.

Brian Lehrer: Sure.

Lee: I was very disappointed in Mr. Matteo. I wanted to hear a debate, and what I heard was a repeat of what Donald Trump did in the first debate in 2020. I wanted to hear a discussion of the issues and I didn't really get that much out of it.

Brian Lehrer: What are some of the issues that you would have liked to hear more of a discussion on?

Lee: I'm sorry, excuse me. I'm concerned. Well, one of the big issues for me, even though I no longer have children in the school system, is doing away with the testing for the specialized high schools. Another issue is, I'm a senior citizen, real estate taxes. The third issue was public transportation, I'm also have a handicap. Access to public transportation on Staten Island. Those are my three big ones.

Brian Lehrer: We did ask about the SHSAT exam, and I didn't pull this clip, but I did ask them if they believe that the SHSAT exam should continue to be the only criterion for entry into the specialized high schools like Bronx Science and u in Brooklyn Tech. They both said they believe that it should remain the only criterion. Is that where you would like them to have landed?

Lee: No. To me, the right answer is always the harder answer. The argument seems to be that more white children get extra tutoring, et cetera, because their parents can pay for it. Well, let's offer that extra tutoring to everybody. Now, that's the harder way to do it, of course, but if everybody had the same basis, then I think you would get more minorities getting into the specialized high schools. I don't think the answer is to do away with the testing. That's throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Brian Lehrer: Lee, thank you so much for your call. We really appreciate it. Call us again, please. That sets up the next clip that I want to play since you brought up that education issue, because one of the other things that I did during the debate was a lightning round of yes or no questions on education. Here are three of those questions and the candidate's answers with implications for racial and religious politics. Would reducing racial segregation in the public schools be a priority of your administration? Mr. Sliwa?

Curtis Sliwa: No.

Brian Lehrer: Mr. Mateo?

Fernando Mateo: No.

Brian Lehrer: Should the schools teach that Columbus "discovered America?" Mr. Sliwa?

Curtis Sliwa: Yes.

Brian Lehrer: Mr. Mateo?

Fernando Mateo: Yes, he did.

Brian Lehrer: Do you think, Mr. Sliwa, that the de Blasio administration did enough to enforce education standards for Yeshivas in their general education or non-religious subjects? Did de Blasio do enough to enforce those standards, Mr. Sliwa?

Curtis Sliwa: No.

Brian Lehrer: Mr. Mateo?

Fernando Mateo: No.

Brian Lehrer: Jeff Coltin from City and State, do their answers are not prioritizing desegregation, and yes, still teaching that Columbus "discovered America" indicate how white the Republican primary electorate is or their stance on culture war issues generally, and how salient that may be in a Republican primary?

Jeff Coltin: I think it's certainly much more of these culture war issues. I don't think you can be convincingly running as a Republican these days and not respond in the ways that they did, and those were pretty standard responses we saw, even from Sliwa, who admittedly only joined the Republican Party, I believe, last year. I think before that he had been a Democrat, he had been an independent.

Brian Lehrer: He has certainly been a conservative. That's how he's most known, as a conservative talk show host.

Jeff Coltin: This is true, right. I guess officially joining the Republican party was maybe a final step to a long career of being known as somebody who's tough on crime, somebody who has a more conservative viewpoint. Look, on these culture war issues, I was certainly interested in how many times the NYPD and support for the police came up. In fact, on the video debate, Mateo had the thin blue line flag of police support right behind him on his Zoom background. It was just a reminder that it's not necessarily the actual policy positions they were talking about, but it was so much of this signaling that, "We are conservatives in the city." Certainly very much a minority, but maybe because of that extra careful to get these cultural touchpoints to signal to the voters that they might want to support them.

Brian Lehrer: I was surprised that the last answer in that set, they thought Mayor de Blasio has not done enough to enforce academic standards at Yeshivas. I would think leaving the Yeshivas alone would be something a Republican hopeful might align with. What do you think not?

Jeff Coltin: It's a good question. I think the criticism of Bill de Blasio there was maybe taking precedent over the actual policy position there of hands-off government and supporting the Orthodox Jewish block, which is often willing to support Republicans in general elections. Really, I do think that it was just, "Wait, here's an opportunity to say Bill de Blasio hasn't done enough. That's great." Of course, de Blasio was criticized numerous times in the debate last night, with Sliwa saying Bill de Blasio single-handedly destroyed the city a number of times. I think de Blasio is a very easy punching bag, even for the Democrats, frankly, but even easier a punching bag for the Republicans.

Brian Lehrer: Here's Nigel, says he's a registered Republican in Flatbush. Hi, Nigel, you're on WNYC.

Nigel: Thank you. Good afternoon. Mr. Lehrer, first of all, the show I saw by accident. It was the best show I saw in months. You're going to get an MEU. You're going to get an Emmy for that. Believe me when I tell you that. Number one, Sliwa, Mateo, the format you presented to the people of New York was not correct. These guys needed to be in a boxing ring, and the referee needed to be Giuliani because all I saw were people trying to worship Trump when they really didn't want to do so. Listen, you played the segregation line. I need you to play the clip for ICE, they both want ICE, and secondary, the bundling clip. Do you have to clip of the bundling? I laughed.

Brian Lehrer: I don't. Are talking about the bundling, because Fernando Mateo was a donations bundler for de Blasio at one point and defended that bundling is legal? Am I thinking of the right thing?

Nigel: Yes, that is it, Sir.

Brian Lehrer: I don't have the clip, I'm sorry to say. If you're actually registered Republican, who are you going to vote for do you think?

Nigel: Let me tell you something. Mateo came out a little too optimistic. Sliwa I like, because Sliwa has the cats. Do you understand? He has the cats. You know what I mean? He's a cat lover. He looks for the wounded animal. Can you fathom that? I will go with Sliwa simply for that.

Brian Lehrer: Nigel, I'm going to leave it there. Thank you very much. He could have fit in on that debate stage with them last night, Jeff, if nothing else for his attitude and his willingness to engage in a little bit of satire I would say, yes?

Jeff Coltin: [chuckles] That's exactly what Sliwa is wanting, the appeal to cat lovers. I was impressed that actually is showing in your callers here. Yes, Sliwa, I believe, he said he has 13, 14, 15 cats, or something like that.

Brian Lehrer: 15. I was going to ask you at the end of the segment to do this fact check as a kicker. Now that it came up, does Curtis Sliwa really live in a 320 square foot Upper West Side studio apartment with 15 rescue cats?

Jeff Coltin: After years in Canarsie, Brooklyn, yes, Sliwa did recently move to the Upper West Side. He brags about how small his apartment is all the time. I've seen him. I'm an Upper West Sider. I've seen him walking around, so there's some evidence. I've also seen some photographic evidence of some cats. I don't know if I've seen 15 in a picture, but I have seen a lot of cats around Curtis. Quite an eccentric living situation, I would say.

Brian Lehrer: Here's another moment from the debate that surprised me a little bit and that presents, an actual policy dilemma for Republicans who see themselves as champions of small business, to be sure, including restaurants, but also see themselves as representing car owners in a city where driving has been discouraged by the last two mayors and made more difficult for many people by the installation of a lot of bike lanes.

Mayor de Blasio, on the parking issue, says the city has sacrificed 8,500 parking spots to save 100,000 restaurant jobs. I asked the candidates about the whole use of streets thing, including weather restaurants now operating outdoor dining in parking spots to survive in the pandemic era should be able to do that permanently. This begins with Mr. Mateo.

Fernando Mateo: No, it should not be made permanent. What we should do is make permanent the fact that they could use their sidewalks, have sidewalk cafes. In restaurants that I have owned, they charge you for a 20-foot storefront. They charge you $30,000 a year. I would give those sidewalks to the restaurant.

Brian Lehrer: All right, now on responding to the streets, our time is short so Mr. Sliwa with the same set of questions. Yes or no on restaurants into the parking spots and also would you continue to build, freeze or tear out bike lanes?

Curtis Sliwa: Brian, in talking about these issues, I noticed you didn't bring up the number one issue for all the residents of all five boroughs, the needless use of these speed cameras. The mayor has now put in place 2,000 speed cameras and he's having them run 24 hours a day. In New Jersey they eliminated the speed cameras. Long Island, they eliminated the speed cameras. As mayor I'm eliminating these speed cameras because it's a tax. That's all it is. It's not about safety, zero vision, none of that. Obviously restaurants that have extended into the streets, they've got to go back. When it comes to bike lanes, if they use it, they should keep it. If they're not using it, they should lose it.

There are a lot of neighborhoods that have bike lanes in which you never see a Pee-wee Herman or anybody on their bicycle rolling up and down, so they should lose those bike lanes.

Brian Lehrer: That from last night's debate. For the record, Mateo then agreed with Sliwa that the speed cameras should be taken out, so they were together on that issue. Jeff, I have to say I wasn't aware of that as an issue. Why would these law and order candidates not want to enforce against speeding, which we know does actually kill many people every year?

Jeff Coltin: I think driving a car in New York City is a way of life for a lot of particularly Republican voters. There's just a correlation between where you live geographically in the city and being a Republican and driving a car. Of course it's not a perfect correlation, but it's there. If you want to win a Republican primary, you need to talk about issues that drivers care about and speed cameras for better, for worse, is one of them. You're right, you would think that if you were a pro-police law and order candidate, that you would want people to be following the rules, but we know that that's not necessarily true. Speed cameras really anger lot of drivers, they feel like it's unfair to be targeted by a camera rather than a living police officer or something like that.

I think this is just an appeal to the car owners and drivers of the city. Actually, Mateo really surprised me yesterday too. Maybe not quite as surprise, but Mateo was saying that uniformed police officers should never pay tolls on bridges and tunnels, that they should get a free ride because they're public servants. I don't know, that one was another appeal to maybe this pro-police culture war but surprised me, just as someone who generally thinks that the city and the MTA and the port authority need this revenue and giving people a free ride on tolls that are driving the cars for personal use seemed interesting.

Brian Lehrer: Not just the MTA needing the revenue, but I think the resentment that would rise up as a backlash if police were seen as kings and queens in that respect. Willing to be, or able to be, exempted from the normal back and forth of-

Jeff Coltin: Yes, we've already seen a lot of pushback against placard abuse certainly.

Brian Lehrer: Sorry, that thing there. Exactly.

Jeff Coltin: It seems almost like a similar situation, potentially.

Brian Lehrer: Mark, who says he's a registered Republican in Queens, you're on WNYC. Hi Mark.

Mark: Hi. How are you? I want to make a point. I think that one of the greatest misconceptions right now in New York City is that this city is as progressive as everybody thinks when it comes to law enforcement and policing. I think there's an emergency happening in the city right now. I think that if there was somebody holding hostages in a bank you wouldn't start a community outreach program. We need tough men and women in uniform in the subways, dealing with the emergency that's happening right now. There are people being flashed, my mother-in-law was spit on on the subway the other day.

There are bad people that are emboldened right now that feel like they can get away with things because of a sense of weakness with the leadership of New York City. I feel like one of the things that the Republican candidates are tapping into is that the city is going to swing a lot more Republican than everybody is thinking if they can project strength on law enforcement.

Brian Lehrer: Do either of those candidates have a better shot at winning in November? They both would have that platform, to be sure. In your opinion, and if you are a registered voter in the Republican party, you get to vote in this primary, do you have a candidate?

Mark: I like Sliwa.

Brian Lehrer: Mark, thank you very much. This is WNYC FM, HD and Am New York. WNJT FM 88.1 Trenton. WNJP 88.5 Sussex. WNJY 89.3 Netcong and WNJO 90.3 Toms River. We are New York and New Jersey public radio. A few more minutes to talk about the Republican mayoral primary, which I was one of the questioners in the broadcast debate in last night, as heard here on WNYC and seen on New York One. We may get to a question or two about news from the Democratic race if we have time with Jeff Colton from the news organization, City and State. Just Briefly, do you have a pundit’s hat to put on? Did anyone win this debate in your political analyst estimation?

Jeff Coltin: Again, I was surprised that Matteo matched Sliwa's energy. Curtis Sliwa was a conservative radio host, and he used to appear on New York One and has always had this frenzied excitable energy and he is admittedly quite entertaining. The fact that that Mateo tried to match that and maybe didn't have quite the level of experience of being an entertainer. Look, they both came across as, let's be honest, a little crazy, but I think Sliwa might've pulled it off a little bit better.

Brian Lehrer: With the media emphasizing how they went at each other and insulted each other, one interesting thing was that the New York Times article on the debate noted that it was odd that Mateo accused Sliwa of being a subway writer. That's an insult in New York City politics, you ride the subway? Did you notice he was repeating that line last night?

Jeff Coltin: He was. I think he was trying to like insult Sliwa's experience as the leader of the Guardian Angels, but it did feel like a weird way to come at it, by calling him a subway rider saying, "You spend so much time on the subways, why don't you become a train conductor?" He said a number of times.

Maybe this was just trying to vaguely insult him for his Guardian Angels non-profit, or maybe it was, again, a way to appeal to the car drivers of the city, some of whom I'm sure look down upon subway riders.

Brian Lehrer: You know what? Let's take one more call. It's Sheila in Brooklyn, who says she's a Democrat but she's a driver who also doesn't like the speed cameras. Sheila, you're on WNYC. Thank you for calling in.

Sheila: Hello?

Brian Lehrer: Hi there, you're on the air.

Sheila: Thank you, I wasn't sure. I just wanted to say I'm very progressive, very liberal, and I feel very weird that I'm very attached to my car, but I just wanted to say that I live in a poor part of Brooklyn and I also drive for multiple reasons, including some health reasons. A speed camera does seem very cynical and oriented towards making money. Especially the fact that school zone cameras are operational until so late at night. I doubt that it's mostly about making money. Sorry, I doubt that it's mostly about safety. I think that a lot of it is about making money for New York City. If they were more transparent about that, I would not like it but I could live with it, but they're not. It's not just Republicans that oppose the prevalence of so many speed cameras.

Brian Lehrer: I hear you, Sheila. Yet the people who support many speed cameras would say what they do is discourage speeding, which of course can be so dangerous, because people never know if a speed camera is watching them.

Sheila: Understood. The thing is that you could be going pretty slow on a pretty big street, but if you're one or two miles above the speed limit, once I was caught going three miles above the speed limit on a huge street on Flatbush.

Brian Lehrer: Really? It grabs you for three miles? On Flatbush Avenue?

Sheila: Yes. It was very empty, it was night. It was just crazy.

Brian Lehrer: Sheila, thank you for your call. I really appreciate it. On that point, do you happen to know, Jeff, I don't, at how many miles over the legal speed limit these cameras are set? Do you really get a ticket for going three miles over the speed limit?

Jeff Coltin: My memory says it's actually 11 miles per hour over that you need to get a ticket. Admittedly, I haven't checked in a while. I could be mistaken there. Look, I understand that Sheila is-- I think there can be certainly a pushback when it feels like the city of New York is trying to make money off of you. I understand that it can be an emotional issue, and yet you got to balance that with many other issues like traffic safety.

Brian Lehrer: I've also heard 11 miles over the speed limit, but we will fact check that because I can't say for sure. You know what? We will leave it there, after those clips and callers and conversation about last night's Republican mayoral primary debate. Jeff Colton writes about politics for the news organization, City and State and their blog-- No, not blog. What do you call it? A newsletter called Campaign Confidential. Thanks a lot, Jeff.

Jeff Coltin: Absolute pleasure to come on. Thank you, Brian.

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