Meet the Mayoral Candidates: Whitney Tilson

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Here's a quick program note about a special we're going to do on Tuesday night. Some of you know that once a year, we honor organizations and individuals who are strengthening the community in different ways through good work with what we call the Lehrer Prize for Community Well-Being. I was honored a few years ago when the station established this in my name.

It comes with a small cash grant to a few individuals or organizations who are doing good community-building work. We're going to do a special Tuesday night at 7:00 announcing the winners of this year's Lehrer Prize and hear from them about what they do that uplifts members of our community and supports community health and well-being. That's the Lehrer Prize for Community Well-Being 2025 special, Tuesday night at 7:00 here on WNYC. I hope you can join us.

Now, we continue to interview all the major candidates in the primaries coming this June for mayor of New York and governor of New Jersey as we invite them on to answer my questions and yours. The mayoral primary is shaping up to be a fierce contest. So many candidates. In this growing field, mostly but not only from the left, seeking to unseat Mayor Eric Adams, one candidate is aiming to carve out a path as a political outsider, Whitney Tilson. Many of you have never heard the name until I just said it right there. Whitney Tilson is a former hedge fund manager and philanthropist who describes himself as a pro-business Democrat, among other things. This is the first public office he has run for. Hello, Mr. Tilson. Welcome to WNYC. Thank you very much for coming on with us.

Whitney Tilson: My pleasure. It's an honor being on your show.

Brian Lehrer: We'll get to some of your specific policy proposals for sure. I know you have some on public safety, education, housing, and more, but let's do some basics first. I want to invite you to introduce yourself to our listeners a little in any way you like. You're probably the least-known candidate in the whole race, so I'll give you a little open platform to start out. Who are you and why do you think you'd make a good mayor?

Whitney Tilson: Sure. Well, I'm a 30-plus-year New Yorker. I love this city. I'm worried it's headed in the wrong direction, that it needs new leadership. I'm not convinced the career politicians running the city and the other career politicians in the Democratic primary, I'm the only one who is not, are the right people to fix this city. I'm a hardcore, lifelong Democrat, grew up in Tanzania and Nicaragua, a child of teachers who met and married in the Peace Corps. Been tackling big problems both here in the city and around the world for my entire adult life.

First job out of college was 35 years ago helping start Teach for America here in the city. Been very involved with KIPP charter schools and the charter school movement here, trying to deliver quality education to every student, especially low-income minority kids who tend to get the short end of the stick in the school system. That, I think, is then the root to so many other of our societal ills.

When the pandemic hit five years ago this month, I didn't flee the city. I spent 12 hours a day working on helping build and operate that field hospital in Central Park. I've been very involved politically for 20-plus years in the Democratic Party, had not considered running for office. After the last election, I looked at the state of the city, looked at the field, and looked at the lane for an outsider, which I think is a more viable lane now than it's ever been given the mood of voters in the city where an all-time high 72% are fed up with the city government and the direction the city's going in. I want to offer an alternative.

Brian Lehrer: An outsider, and I've seen that you've compared yourself to former mayor Michael Bloomberg, who came in from the business sector without political experience and became mayor in that respect. I see that you told CNBC recently that you're running to "drag your party back from the far left." If you affirm that quote is accurate, what policies or values do you have in mind with that?

Whitney Tilson: Well, let's start with the far left. Embrace the Defund the Police movement, which I warned at the time, was both disastrous on the merits and politically. Three of the dumbest words I've ever heard. Sure enough, my warnings came true. Since that Defund the Police movement went into effect in a bunch of related legislation that basically decriminalized all but the most serious crimes, the seven major felonies in New York City are up an average of 52%. Felony assaults are at a 25-year high in the city. Politically, we have paid a horrible price.

I think one of the reasons that 90% of US counties shifted toward Trump in the last election, which was horrifying to me, was Defund the Police. Republicans hung us on that. That would be one area. A second area where I think the far left has lost its mind is embracing Hamas and turning anti-Semitic in a city that's 20% Jewish. My wife and children are Jewish. We've been 25 years members of Central Synagogue. I've just been horrified by the explosion of anti-Semitism. Much of that has come from the far left of my own party. Those would certainly be two examples.

Brian Lehrer: You'll certainly get pushback from other candidates in the race who would argue that the bail reform was not responsible for whatever changes in crime have happened since the beginning of the pandemic and that they certainly don't support Hamas even if they're against what Israel has been doing, but that's going to be for you and them to debate. Then based on what you said or following up on what you said, what makes you a Democrat rather than a Republican in the context of those critiques or the context of this race?

Whitney Tilson: It's funny that I sometimes get asked, "You sound like a Republican." I have supported almost entirely 99% Democrats through my political life. I grew up in lefty parents, '60s parents from the Peace Corps, and have always fought for Democratic principles from a strong social safety net to environmental protections, you name it. I have fought so hard against Trump and Trumpism since he came down that escalator almost 10 years ago. I was at the Democratic National Convention in August and have fought my hardest. It's really my party that has shifted, not me.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we can take your questions as well as mine as we do in these candidate interviews today for Whitney Tilson, running in the Democratic primary for mayor. 212-433-WNYC, call or text, 212-433-9692. Following up on that, just to touch on some Democratic Party basics, can we assume that you're pro-choice on abortion rights? You supported Roe v. Wade, another Democratic basic that you think billionaires are undertaxed in the United States. Any disagreement with either of those premises that a lot of people in your party would state?

Whitney Tilson: No, I'm strongly pro-choice and pro-gay marriage and LGBTQ rights. Regarding taxation of billionaires generally, I have very publicly called for what's called the Buffett Tax, which is a minimum tax on-- We're talking probably the highest 100 income earners. I've called for closing the carried interest loophole for hedge funds and private equity funds, which has earned me some irritation among my peers in the financial business. I think their income should be tax-like income just like everybody else. Yes, very much aligned on those issues.

Brian Lehrer: Another Democratic issue where Trump is certainly stepping in and reversing a lot of Biden and other previous policies. How much do you think man-made climate change is a serious problem for the world and for the city? I do see you're for congestion pricing, right?

Whitney Tilson: Yes, I am. In fact, I want to do congestion pricing the way Singapore does it, which is use it not primarily as a revenue-generation tool, though I support it to fund improvements in our public transportation, but primarily as a congestion-elimination tool. Singapore does dynamic pricing by the hour in every place where there is congestion. I want to be the mayor that eliminates congestion everywhere in New York City 24/7, 365. I think it would be an incredible quality-of-life improvement for businesses, for tourism, in addition to being an environmental benefit and raise money to improve our public transportation.

Brian Lehrer: Let's get to one of your education proposals. You already mentioned your relationship with Teach for America and some charter schools. I saw on City & State, that news site, that you co-founded the PAC Democrats for Education Reform, which supports pro-charter candidates. Talk about why you think more charter schools, which are a hot button within the party as you know, and what else do you have at the top of your education agenda?

Whitney Tilson: Sure. I founded Democrats for Education Reform after joining the board of KIPP and with a couple of friends of mine who are on other charter network boards. We realized that, actually, the more successful we were in helping low-income minority kids, about 99% of the kids we serve, we deliberately open and operate our schools in the highest-need communities in New York City where the public schools are doing the worst.

We take kids who have less than a 10% chance of ever graduating from college and giving them a 60% or 70% chance, so completely transformative outcomes. We are public schools open to all. 97% of our funding is public. We discovered because we're non-union, the teachers union viewed us a threat and basically used their incredible political muscle to try and choke our schools, put a cap on them, cut our funding, et cetera, and so we had to play the political game.

We created Democrats for Education Reform to break the teacher union's stranglehold over the Democratic Party, which I believe is an embarrassment for a party that is supposed to stand for helping for equality and helping poor kids achieve the American dream, have a fair shot at it just like everybody else. That was really a real political awakening in seeing one major way in which my party could be led astray by probably the most powerful interest group in the city.

As mayor, I'm clearly going to fight to raise the charter cap and give more than 15% of New York kids the opportunity, the option of a high-quality charter school. We have the best charter sector in the country, I believe. Every five years, our schools have to justify their existence or we will lose our charter. We have to demonstrate that we're delivering for kids. I think every public school should have to do the same. Why is one type of public school held to different standards?

After police commissioner, my second most important hire will be the education commissioner. That's $40 billion of the city's $115 billion city budget. I'll be thinking someone along the lines of Joel Klein, who is a real reformer working with Mike Bloomberg and taking advantage of mayoral control. I've got my eye on some people in the sector. I do not begrudge the teacher union's right to organize. I will never try and bust unions. I believe in strong unions, but I also believe in strong negotiations and not having politicians that are beholden to the special interests that effectively elected them.

Brian Lehrer: Our first caller right on Line 1 wants to push back on this very issue, I think. Laurie in Manhattan, you're on WNYC with Democratic primary for mayor candidate Whitney Tilson. Hi, Laurie.

Laurie: Thank you very much. Mr. Tilson just pushed all the buttons as far as I'm concerned. Mike Bloomberg and Joel Klein were an absolute disaster for New York City public schools. They brought in whole language, which was awful. Joel Klein brought in this nonsense about children have to sit at tables, not at desks. We had half the kids with their backs or their sides to the teachers. The whole thing with charter schools, you're sucking out the best kids, the most motivated parents, and you're doing nothing for the public schools. Then you say, "Oh, look at that, the public schools are failing and the charter schools are succeeding." Well, of course, you're hand-feeding one and you're starving the other. This is not the future.

Brian Lehrer: Laurie, thank you very much. Briefly, your response to Laurie's very specific criticisms there.

Whitney Tilson: Yes, the only thing I would agree with her is she is correct. That whole language, a method of teaching reading, was a disaster. Phonics is clearly the way to go. I'm glad the school system has reverted back to that. Everything else she said is factually incorrect or I disagree with. The schools improved. Not just charter schools, all public school students in New York City, for example, on the most fundamental measure I would argue is fourth-grade reading. Whether kids can read at, at least, a basic level by age 10, that is more important than any other metric.

If you can't read by age 10, it's pretty much game over. Under Mike Bloomberg, the percentage of fourth graders reading at the below basic, lowest level when he came in was a shocking 53% after 12 years of reforms and improvements. Educators in the system tell me, those 12 years were the only 12 years in their careers that the system was really working for kids. That number had dropped from 53% to 38%. Since he's left, the career politicians are back in. It's back up to 48%. You can document the progress that was made under independent mayor and reform-oriented chancellor.

Brian Lehrer: The last thing she brought up, the cherry-picking. I know charter schools work on a lottery system and anybody can apply, but I think the argument is that it's the more organized parents, more aggressive parents who even apply their kids to charter schools. It does weed out more kids more likely to succeed and leave all the others without them. What's your response to that?

Whitney Tilson: The days of the charter school lotteries are gone. There's an under-enrollment problem with the 8% loss of population in New York in the last less than five years. These schools are open to all. Right now, basically, parents have to make a decision about where to apply to send their kids, no matter what school, whether charter or not. We locate our schools. If we were trying to cherry-pick, we would be locating our schools in the wealthiest areas of New York City. In fact, we do exactly the opposite. Our mission as charities is to serve the highest-need students.

Brian Lehrer: Lawrence in Brooklyn also heard some of what you said before on other topics and I think wants to push back on those or ask you about them. Lawrence, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Lawrence: Hey, hi. Yes, Mr. Tilson, the first two issues you mentioned were what is now an obsolete slogan from 2020 and 2021, and then the--

Brian Lehrer: You mean the Defund the Police, right?

Lawrence: Defund the police and then the supposed far-left Democratic Party in New York, sympathy for Hamas. I just got to say, you're opening with that. It just seems like pandering to some small, probably not that helpful to you blocks of voters in New York City and nobody cares. I don't think the city council is a Hamas agent. New York City isn't defunding the police. Bail reform obviously needs fine-tuning, but there was some real truth to that. Then you went on to espouse some issues, which I actually might have something in common with you, but it seemed like you opened with pandering to me to issues that aren't real in New York City.

Brian Lehrer: Lawrence, thank you very much. Your response, Mr. Tilson.

Whitney Tilson: Yes, I would argue I'm doing the opposite of pandering. I am saying things that I believe that I know are going to trigger and cause some meaningful portion of the Democratic primary base in the city to spit up their coffee. I got into the race saying my only lane is to be different from all the other career politicians that are pandering to the progressive electorate that determines and primarily votes in the Democratic primary.

My only path to victory is to go after the 74% of registered Democrats in New York City who did not vote last time. It's a low turnout off-year, middle of the summer, primary coming up on June 24th. It's designed that way by the party machine to suppress turnout so that a handful of special interest groups can elect the politicians who then are supposed to negotiate with them. My only strategy is to be totally authentic, to say what I really believe, to highlight the excesses of the far left in the city.

I gave two extreme examples, but I'll give a more common example that's really the single issue that's crushing New Yorkers, which is housing affordability. Rents nationwide have been going down for 20 consecutive months. In New York City, where they're already the highest, they're still going up because good ideas taken way too far in zoning regulations, environmental stuff, eviction processes, et cetera, all things I believe in but, when taken too far, have created an environment where almost no one is willing to invest and build in what should be the most attractive city in the country to be building housing in.

Instead, I alone among all the other candidates, as best I can tell, I'm out there talking to restaurant owners and business owners and real estate developers and investors. They basically have, in many ways, given up on New York. They're like, "We're over there building new housing in Newark because New York has become so impossible." That's another area where I want to make this a city of abundance and prosperity and wealth and job creation. That creates rising wages. That's the way I want to help working-class New Yorkers.

Brian Lehrer: Are there one or two things at the top of your list that you would change or add with respect to housing policy?

Whitney Tilson: Well, it starts with zoning. I think the City of Yes is a step in the right direction. By the time a weak and ineffective Eric Adams, who was correctly pushing for it, and a very far-left city council filled with a lot of anti-growth NIMBY types got through with it, it was watered down to the point where it might get 80,000 units in 15 years in a city of 8.1 million people with a 1.4% vacancy rate. If I'm elected, I'm going to go fight for the other 90% that we need.

Austin, Texas had a housing rental crisis in 2021. It was a popular city coming out of COVID. Rents went up 25% in a single year. The leaders of Austin, unlike New York, excuse me, recognized that this was a crisis. They slashed the permitting process time in half. They loosened some of the zoning restrictions to allow somewhat taller buildings. They changed housing lot size for building single-family homes from 5,500 square feet to 1,700 so you could build three smaller, more affordable homes on the same lot.

Within two years, their housing supply and rental supply went up 15% and rents went down 22%. Housing prices went down 23%. All this happened in the last four years. We need that kind of emergency program to unleash the many, many tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars that private investors would be willing to invest in this city to build more housing and bring housing prices down, but we're making it impossible for them.

Brian Lehrer: Listener asks a follow-up question on housing. I'm not exactly sure where they're going with this in the text message, but I guess they just want to know your opinion. The text just says, "Rent-stabilized housing?"

Whitney Tilson: I'm not quite sure what the question there is, but I think if I infer what it is, is about a million units in New York are rent-stabilized. I believe that renters should be protected. The 2019 act in this area went a little bit too far in some areas where it made it almost impossible for owners of rent-stabilized units to invest in them. You'd have a situation where somebody had been in there for decades, was paying far below market, and they move or they pass away.

The apartment is dilapidated and needs at least $100,000, if not $200,000 to $300,000 to renovate it, bring it up to code, and put it back on the market. The law has a hard cap on this and allows it. Originally, it's $15,000. Now, it's $50,000, where you can invest in it and raise the rents to recoup your costs. Some apartments need a lot more than that. I've heard estimates of 50,000 to 100,000 apartments right now are simply empty and padlocked rent-stabilized apartments because the owners of those apartments can't rent them in their current condition, but it doesn't make sense to put a dollar into them.

We need to be thinking about how to make New York City, generally speaking, a much more attractive place to invest. I can tell you, investors can invest their money anywhere in the country, anywhere in the world. I think in New York, we've gotten complacent. We're so rich. We're such a great city. The law of unintended consequences is biting us. It's created an affordability crisis that has driven more than 700,000 New Yorkers, almost all working-class people, out of the city in less than five years. We've lost 8% of our population. It's not slowing down. It's not just pandemic. It was 2% last year. We're the second worst of any of the 70 largest cities in America other than San Francisco.

Brian Lehrer: As we continue to interview and take your calls for all the major candidates in the primaries for mayor of New York and governor of New Jersey, we are with former hedge fund manager Whitney Tilson now, who is in the Democratic primary for mayor. Another of your proposals or I should say promises coming back to public safety. We went through your critique of the bail reform law and some pushback from a caller on that. I see that you also say you could cut crime in New York City by 50% in your first term by investing in the communities most effective. Can you lay that out for us briefly?

Whitney Tilson: Sure. Well, there are three pillars to my crime-fighting plan. One is to address the long-term causes, and that is crime is not random. It is very, very localized. Something like 3% or 4% of the city blocks in New York City account for well over half the crime. These tend to be areas where the schools are failing. There aren't enough after-school programs. The housing projects aren't being run well. The parks are a mess. There isn't enough mental health funding, et cetera.

All of these things combine to create the conditions where people turn to crime and become unsafe areas, but that's long term. In the short term, we are right now at a 34-year low in the number of police officers in the city. I've talked to many of them. I've talked to many business owners, et cetera, who when they are getting robbed in broad daylight, they call the police. The police say, "Well, was anyone shot or stabbed or is anyone beaten up and sent to the hospital?"

If the answer is no, they don't even bother showing up. That's a function of, one, being understaffed. I don't blame the police officers. Two, not just bail reform but discovery reform and a half-dozen other pieces of legislation that all passed during the Defund the Police era and after Democrats flipped the state senate that collectively, basically made crime legal, all but the most serious crimes. If there are no consequences for these lower-level crimes, you're going to get a lot more of it. Part of my job as mayor, I can directly control the police department.

Some of it will be going to the city council and the state legislature. I don't want to bring back the bail system. For heaven's sake, we need to give judges the ability to consider dangerousness when making a pretrial detention decision. We are the only one of 50 states that does not allow judges to do this. This is a classic example of the road to hell is paved with good intentions. We had good intentions. I was actually part of this at one time to reform bail, but it went too far by getting rid of bail and not giving judges' dangerousness, for example.

Brian Lehrer: Listener asks in a text message. He says he's for LGBTQ rights. "What does he believe about gender-affirming care and protecting trans girls playing sports in schools?" Also, he says he thinks people who support Palestine are pro-Hamas. "What are his thoughts on the New York permanent resident who is currently in ICE detention?" Really, two separate questions there. Take each briefly. Gender-affirming career/protecting trans girls playing sports in schools.

Whitney Tilson: Yes, gender-affirming care, I think, is something should be primarily left up to families and doctors. It should be done with extreme caution and the medications used should be black box-labeled because these are life-changing, irreversible decisions. There, sadly, hasn't been enough good research in this area. Anyone who has gone through puberty as a male benefited from testosterone should not be allowed to play in girls' sports. I have three daughters and it's an issue of safety and fairness. All of my daughters played lots of contact sports through high school. I have numerous LGBTQ folks, including transgender people in my family. I think Trump and Republicans' demonization of these people is abhorrent and we'll fight all day for their rights. I draw the line at participating in sports having gone through puberty. Regarding the second question?

Brian Lehrer: Yes, the detention of Mahmoud Khalil for deportation by ICE.

Whitney Tilson: Yes, I don't like this guy one bit. I think he's stirring up divisiveness. I think a lot of the money has come from China and Qatar that is funding a lot of these protests. That said, in typical Trump administration fashion, they threw the Constitution and the law out the window, acted precipitously. He is a green card holder. If they have evidence that he is actually tied to terrorist-related groups and all, they should have presented that and gotten a judge to revoke his green card before arresting him.

Brian Lehrer: Adjacent to that, I read that a big supporter of yours is Bill Ackman, who, according to New York Magazine, has in recent years become a bogeyman of the left. He was among the loudest voices. Some people remember pushing to oust Harvard's President Claudine Gay after that hearing about her handling of campus divisions around the Israel-Hamas war. He has also said he would use AI to check other professors' work because the plagiarism issue had been brought up as a wedge against her. For people who are concerned that Bill Ackman is a big supporter of yours and you're running in a Democratic primary, what do you say?

Whitney Tilson: Yes, Bill and I became friends 38 years ago when we were at Harvard undergrad together. He remains a friend to this day. I am sure I am not the only Democrat who's had one or more friends go down the Trump-supporting route. I vehemently disagreed with him on that. I believe it's important to be able to disagree without being disagreeable. I was unable to persuade him to change his views. He was certainly unable to persuade me. Our friendship remains and is well-known. As I said, it's important to be able to disagree without being disagreeable.

Brian Lehrer: Last thing in our last minute. People who have been listening to you this morning might wonder, how are you different from, say, Andrew Cuomo, particularly Andrew Cuomo or Eric Adams, who might give a lot of the same answers that you gave on a lot of issues? Why should people who are interested in them and agree with you on a lot of things vote for you over either of them?

Whitney Tilson: Yes, I think you are correct that if you were to just go down straight policy lanes, the three of us would be more in the center lane, and then the rest of the field is more to the left. Eric Adams says he is running, but he is not out there petitioning to get on the ballot right now as best I can tell. It's not clear he's even really running.

Brian Lehrer: Just compare yourself to Cuomo.

Whitney Tilson: In terms of Cuomo, he's the 800-pound gorilla in the race. He is, according to the betting sites, about 2/3 likely to be the nominee just on name recognition and machine. What that means though is, is there's a 1/3 chance that he's not the nominee. I don't think Eric Adams will be on the ballot or is electable. What that means is there's quite a realistic scenario that I'm the last man standing in the center lane.

Brian Lehrer: Whitney Tilson running in the Democratic primary for mayor. Thank you for sitting for this interview and answering listener questions as part of that. We really appreciate it.

Whitney Tilson: It was my pleasure.

 

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