Reporters Ask the Mayor: Campaigning, Cuomo and Randy Mastro

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now it's time for our usual Wednesday visit from our lead Eric Adams reporter Elizabeth Kim, after what is usually the mayor's Tuesday weekly news conference, the only time all week, he takes questions from reporters on topics that they choose. For the last couple of weeks, Adams has held that news conference on Monday, but Liz is with us today. With the reelection campaign that's facing fundraising challenges, the hiring of a controversial new first deputy mayor associated more with the likes of Chris Christie and Rudy Giuliani than any Democrat, and collaboration with federal immigration authorities. There's plenty to discuss. Hey, Liz. Happy Wednesday.

Elizabeth Kim: Happy Wednesday, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Let's start with the first clip. Mayor Adams dismissed concerns about his lagging campaign fundraising. He said this.

Mayor Eric Adams: Never count New York out and never count Eric out. That's the rule of the day.

Brian Lehrer: Simple. What do his latest fundraising numbers actually tell us?

Elizabeth Kim: He raised about $19,000 in two months, and that's a pretty paltry amount for an incumbent. It really signals how weak and unpopular the mayor is. Now, I think it is important to point out that it's not like the mayor doesn't have any money. He's been rejected from matching funds in this round. He has said that he hopes to get it in a subsequent round, but he does have around over $3 million still. That is still something that he can spend. People have asked questions because he doesn't have much of a campaign infrastructure, and they're wondering whether he's worried about perhaps being able to afford a real campaign.

Brian Lehrer: Does he need signatures to get on the ballot, or is it automatic because he's the incumbent?

Elizabeth Kim: No, he needs signatures. This is another question that has been repeatedly put to him. If you're walking around the city these days, you probably see a lot of volunteers with these clipboards and these blue pieces of paper asking people to sign.

Brian Lehrer: In fact, someone came up to me with one of those yesterday on the platform of a subway station.

Elizabeth Kim: Was it for Mayor Adams?

Brian Lehrer: It was not. It was for another candidate who I won't name.

Elizabeth Kim: Right. People have asked him about this. They haven't really seen an active network of people. Then again, that is the problem. The mayor doesn't seem to have much of a campaign infrastructure. He recently did hire a spokesperson for his campaign, and that had been a glaring vacancy that really puzzled people. He's got something there. I don't really know what kind of volunteer operation he has at this point and who's collecting the signatures for him.

Typically, if the mayor has allies in the council and they're collecting signatures for themselves, they could also do it for the mayor as well. That leaves another question. Who are his allies in the council or even in the state legislature who would be willing to do that right now?

Brian Lehrer: There was a question at the news conference about whether Adams might run as an independent. Here's how he answered that.

Mayor Eric Adams: I'm going to be running as a Democrat. I say this over and over again, and we will map out our plan when time is fitting, but I'm running as a Democrat.

Brian Lehrer: That sounds like an unequivocal answer, but people have a lot of reason to suspect that he might wind up running as an independent if he doesn't get the Democratic nomination. He's kind of to the right a bit of where the party's primary base is, but he's not a Republican. Maybe he's going to run as an independent, but he-- I don't know. Did that answer rule that out?

Elizabeth Kim: I don't think so. I guess what he's committing to there is he's going to run in the Democratic primary. Last week, we talked about this, about how one of his closest allies, Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn, who is the head of the Brooklyn Democratic Party, said that she has had private conversations with the mayor where he was considering running as an independent. I think what the mayor is trying to bat away is that he's campaigning. I think, for him, he needs to campaign to maintain relevance. Whether or not he views a realistic path to victory is something I don't think we will really know.

Brian Lehrer: He says, and I saw him say this in the news conference, I don't think we have that clip that by being mayor, he's campaigning. He's doing all these things. He's appearing at town halls as mayor. He's going to other events as mayor. He's being covered by the media, obviously, because he's doing things as mayor. That is his campaign. Fair?

Elizabeth Kim: I thought that was a very fair point that the mayor made because if there's one thing that people who follow the mayor know about him is that, and this was me watching him in 2021, he is a voracious campaigner. In many ways, he never really stopped campaigning, even as mayor. Like he says, he's going to churches. He is holding events for different constituents at Gracie Mansion. He's talking to voters at town halls. What is that if not campaigning? That means that he does, like he can use the bully pulpit of his incumbency as a campaign opportunity. Every public event for the mayor is essentially an opportunity to get out a message to tell voters why they should reelect him.

Brian Lehrer: He pushed back, in this next clip that we're going to play, on a reporter who started a question about Andrew Cuomo with the premise, "I know you're not on the campaign trail yet," so we're going to hear the mayor push back on that. This also sets up a conversation about Cuomo and Adams. Here we go.

Reporter: I know you're not on the campaign trail yet, but a lot of the candidates for mayor stood together, even Republican Carlos Silva stood with the Democratic potential nominees, and they called out former Governor Cuomo for his handling of the nursing homes. Do you believe that Governor Cuomo handled the nursing homes properly during the pandemic?

Mayor Eric Adams: First, we need to be clear on the record. You keep saying you're not on the campaign trail. Where y'all get this definition from? Is there a Webster definition of what being on the campaign trail is?

Brian Lehrer: There's that, but I'm going to go right on to another clip of Adams where he does seem to ramp up his criticism of Andrew Cuomo. A few times, he criticized Cuomo for his handling of COVID in nursing homes during the pandemic, as the question referred to. He also said this about the former governor.

Mayor Eric Adams: Someone said, well, he's a great manager. Well, he should have managed that crisis well, like I managed COVID and like I manage 230,000 migrants and asylum seekers.

Brian Lehrer: Since they're in relatively the same lane ideologically and politically, as most political observers describe it, maybe for people who are inclined toward Adams or Cuomo, it's going to be a lot about this who's a better manager, you think?

Elizabeth Kim: Right. I think this is going to be really interesting to watch, Brian. This is the dynamic that I think I'm most interested to see. It's not just that he's intensifying his criticism of the former governor. He's also going at him about policies that he says hurt Black New Yorkers, which is the mayor's base, which has been, I should say, the mayor's base. To the extent that he could maybe turn Black New Yorkers against Cuomo and maybe peel off some of that support, I think it's still possible for the mayor to not-- I don't know that he can win, but I wonder whether, in some ways, he can be a spoiler to Cuomo.

Again, we have heard him indirectly hit at the governor, but he's starting to directly hit at the governor. I thought this conversation about COVID policy under Cuomo, this idea of he's accusing the governor of not providing equitable vaccinations, and I wonder whether that will be compelling to Black and Brown New Yorkers who maybe did have trouble accessing the vaccine in the early days.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we have time for a few of your questions for Liz Kim on the reporter's questions, including Liz, who's always in that room to Mayor Adams or generalized to the mayoral race as that is a lot of what the questions have been about right now. Obviously, we're in primary season. June primary coming up. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, if you want to call or text a question for Liz.

By the way, do you happen to know when the mail-in ballots go out? We just had New Jersey gubernatorial candidate in the primary, Mikie Sherrill, in the last segment. I read in prepping for that that the mail-in ballots will go out next month. It's a June primary, but the mail-in ballots for those who've requested them will go out in April. People will be able to vote in April for the nomination for governor of New Jersey. Do you know when that starts? Is it that soon in New York as well?

Elizabeth Kim: I don't know that. That's a Bridgid Bergin question, our elections expert. I wish I knew that. I could tell you the primary is June 24th.

Brian Lehrer: I know I'm putting you on the spot.

Elizabeth Kim: Early voting will begin before that. No, that's a good question.

Brian Lehrer: That's the in-person early voting. The New Jersey primary day is a few weeks before the New York one. That's in early June. It may not be as quite as soon as that.

Elizabeth Kim: I do want to say, though, Brian, about the primary because people are starting to talk about who's the front runner, who has the best shot at winning the race. I would say, we have about 90 days to go. In some ways, it doesn't feel like a lot of time, but it is more than enough time for the race to change. I was looking up today when-- Do you remember that Times Square shooting in 2021 that really reshaped the race and made it about public safety and it allowed Adams to raise-

Brian Lehrer: Yes.

Elizabeth Kim: -his profile? That happened in May. We're in March now. There are many things that can happen still that could change the race. I think voters are still really not paying attention either. I spent some time on the trail with Zohran Mamdani, and I can't tell you the number of people who were walking by him who are just-- They're just not tuned into the race yet.

Brian Lehrer: A listener texts a follow-up question to a question I asked Liz previously. I had asked whether she investigated claims that Mayor Adams is being held to a higher standard than past mayors. Some argue that other mayors have committed equally egregious acts. I guess this refers to the things he's been indicted for, though different in nature, yet were never indicted. Have you looked into that? What do you think about that comparison?

Elizabeth Kim: That's definitely something that the mayor very strongly believes. I mean, he has a lot of animosity and resentment toward the press and toward law enforcement because he feels that he has been treated unfairly with respect to the press. I never underestimate how race shapes coverage. Him being only the second Black mayor, only the second mayor of color, I don't easily dismiss the mayor's complaints there.

All the same, there have been unprecedented kinds of crises and controversies involving the mayor. He is the first mayor to be federally indicted. That says a lot. He will, of course, say that the case was a trumped-up case that this was about. You can argue, was it really just about flight upgrades and getting a nicer hotel suite? Was that worth an indictment? In many ways, we'll never know because that case, it looks like it's going to be dropped. We can't say for sure. If it is dropped, we will never see the full evidence that the Southern District had on the mayor.

Brian Lehrer: Listener asks a question for me in a text and that is, "Has Curtis Sliwa been on your show yet? If not, is there a date, or has he not shown any inclination?" The answer to that is, the Democrats have this big field that's running in the primary and we're in the primary season now. From everything I've seen, Curtis Sliwa is running unopposed for the Republican nomination. We're going to interview the primary candidates in primary season as it's going to take us a lot of segments to get through them. That's just the appropriate thing to do.

Certainly, four years ago when Sliwa was the Republican nominee, he did come on the show in the fall. We will absolutely invite him again in the fall when we're in general election season. I assume he will probably accept. That's the answer to that question. Jane in the Bronx, you're on WNYC. Hello, Jane.

Jane: Hey, good morning. I listen to your show pretty frequently and the way that you introduced the show. I remember when Eric Adams went down to this single opportunity for the press to scrutinize and ask the good questions that your reporters ask and you made a certain point of it. Now, I feel like the way that you introduce this segment every week really normalizes this very unusual behavior and practice of a mayor of New York. We have such little opportunity to have these questions put to him via our journalists. The way you introduced, "Well, he just does only a weekly access." I'm like, that's so different than other mayors who were available almost every single day for the press to question them. It's not about the topics you're discussing today.

Brian Lehrer: I know.

Jane: It's about the way that I feel like you normalize a very abnormal practice of our mayor, if that makes sense to you.

Brian Lehrer: Very fair question. I'll tell you my take on it, which is that I'm calling them out on it every single week by including that in the intro. I hear what you're saying. I understand the importance. If you hear it as normalizing, then I'm failing. What I think I'm doing is calling out the fact in every single week's introduction to Liz that the mayor only takes questions from reporters on topics that they choose once a week.

Liz, has he varied from that? They call this, I guess in the lingo of beat reporters covering the mayor, they call it an off-topic news conference, which I think goes over the public's head when they say that on TV and sometimes on a station. What it means is you can ask questions off the topic that the mayor is holding an event for. He has other press availabilities during the week, but the questions have to be on the topic that he is generating. Does he vary from that? Is it really only once a week that you can ask off-topic questions?

Elizabeth Kim: The caller is absolutely right. I think that sometimes as reporters, I do think we run the risk of normalizing it because they have instituted this for, I think now well over a year. I think we have become accustomed to it. The way it works is yes, the mayor will hold other press events throughout the week and his press secretaries will try to control the questions, meaning they will say if you try to ask him something about, let's say, the federal indictment, they will step in and say on-topic questions only.

Now, once in a while, the mayor will allow an off-topic question. I think sometimes it depends on the reporter who's asking it. It also depends on the issue if it is something that he wants to speak to. I think the broader criticism holds is that this is a mayoralty that has increasingly closed off press access. I'll just give you an example from my point of view. I'm sure, Brian, you will say this too about the number of times that you've tried to get the mayor to come on.

In his first year, I was able to get the mayor on the phone, for example. I can't even think of-- It is so hard to even-- I can't even fathom him coming on the phone with me anymore. That was the kind of accessibility he had in the beginning and it was great. It is what you want to see out of a mayor. Now, pretty much he tries to pick and choose the outlets he talks to and he prefers television.

Brian Lehrer: I will say for the record that as of now, neither Mayor Adams nor former Governor Cuomo have accepted our invitation to come on in our series with all the primary candidates for mayor and answer my questions and listeners' questions. All the other Democratic candidates either have been on already or have accepted in principle, and it's just a matter of scheduling.

Cuomo had a record when he was governor of not being willing to take listener questions. We are going to hold that as a standard. If he comes on as a candidate, he's going to have to take calls, not just answer my questions. We'll see if Mayor Adams becomes more responsive to the idea of coming on in this series at all. I'll just put that out there as what's going on behind the scenes. I think it's worthy of being made public at this point with respect to the two of them before time slips away and it just doesn't happen without any note.

I want to ask you about Randy Mastro, the new first deputy mayor under Adams after four of his previous deputy mayors resigned after he appeared to be cooperating with the Trump administration in that alleged quid pro quo. The mayor praised Mastro's legal expertise. We know Mastro's history, his aggressive defense of corporate and government clients, Chris Christie and Bridgegate. He was a leader in the Rudy Giuliani administration. What should we expect from Randy Mastro, no matter what anybody in any camp may think of him?

Elizabeth Kim: I think this will be a very interesting person to watch in City Hall. He does have experience working as a deputy mayor. Now, he is first deputy mayor, but under former mayor Rudy Giuliani, he was one of the top deputy mayors. That means that he brings experience. Under Giuliani, he had a lot of experience working with the city council. That's going to be something to watch because if you remember when the mayor nominated him to be corporation counsel, which is the city's top lawyer, things got very heated because the council, it was one of the few roles that the council had say over. The council members really pushed back on him because they felt that his clients did not represent the city's values.

Just to remind people, he was the lawyer that represented New Jersey in their lawsuit to stop congestion pricing. He's defended Chevron, big oil. He's defended residents against bike lanes. He was this very polarizing figure. Ultimately, because of the pushback, Mastro withdrew his nomination. Now he's back, but it's in a different role. I do wonder how much engagement or contact he'll have with the council.

Typically, the first deputy mayor is, for example, very involved in budget negotiations. How will that go? Will those tensions that occurred during the hearings when he was trying to become corporation counsel, will that spill over into those budget discussions? It's definitely something to watch. From what I've heard from people like Joe Lhota, who worked with Mastro in the Giuliani administration, is they think that he would be very, very good in this role. I'm interested in seeing how handles it.

Brian Lehrer: Here's a text from a listener that says it's criminal that the Republicans in New York City are not running an anti-MAGA candidate. We know, for example, there is at least one anti-MAGA candidate in the New Jersey gubernatorial primary on the Republican side. "Are there no candidates available?" asked this listener. Why is it? From the Republican side, is there such a consensus around Curtis Sliwa?

Elizabeth Kim: I think the bigger question is, I think why are they putting up Curtis Sliwa again who didn't do very well in the last election four years ago? Is there not a fresher face that Republicans can put up in this moment, especially after last year's elections, election when Republicans and Donald Trump made gains in certain districts? You really have to scratch your head a little bit as to why there aren't more Republicans stepping up to volunteer and say, "I would like to run for mayor."

Brian Lehrer: Let's play one last little clip of Eric Adams. This is from a town hall the mayor held last week in the Rockaways. This clip kind of went viral.

Mayor Eric Adams: There's a real history for me. I had a shorty that lived out here, used to come out taking that long A Train ride in the cold. Love is blind, man.

Brian Lehrer: For people who are listening and going, "What? What? What does he mean by a shorty? What's the whole context of this?" Spend our last minute on that.

Elizabeth Kim: The mayor was talking about a girlfriend that he once had, and he's speaking to an audience of Rockaway residents and he was reminiscing about how he used to have to take that A Train, that long A Train ride to visit his girlfriend. There were moments where he didn't have enough money to pay for the fare and he jumped the turnstile. It was a clip that ended up going viral.

It's very interesting because, Brian, we were just talking about how the mayor has all these opportunities to essentially campaign, and town halls are one of them. This was his opening remarks to the people at the town hall, and it ended up going viral. It was not about his message on public safety or the case for a second term. It was just this kind of zany personal recollection, I think, that is part of his persona that makes him very unique, that makes him entertaining to some people, confused to others. I think that this is definitely a unique feature of the Adams mayoralty, is his ability to authentically talk about himself in a way that grabs New Yorkers' attention.

Brian Lehrer: By the way, when I asked when the mail-in ballots go out in the New York City mail race and you said, "Oh, that's a Brigid Bergin question," well, guess what? Brigid on the case, let us know the answer. Petitions, which you said are being collected right now, and we don't know if the mayor has the signatures to even stay on the ballot, petitions are due next week, April 3rd. Ballots go out 46 days before primary day, citing the Board of Elections deputy executive director. That would be May 9th. It'll be as early as May 9th.

It'll be in April for the New Jersey gubernatorial primary. It'll be around May 9th that those mail-in ballots go out in the mail. Once you get them, you can fill them out and mail them back in if you want. It could be relatively early in May that the first go out, the first votes go in in the primary for mayor of New York. We leave it there for this week with Liz Kim. Thanks, Liz.

Elizabeth Kim: Thanks, Brian.

 

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