Curtis Sliwa, Andrew Cuomo, and Zohran Mamdani clash in NYC's final mayoral debate over Rikers Island closure by 2027, with Sliwa opposing it while Cuomo and Mamdani support reform despite rising detainee counts. They dispute Local Law 97 climate mandates, minimum wage hikes to $30, and free bus proposals, while addressing anti-Semitism concerns and education funding cuts. Ultimately, the candidates reveal starkly divergent visions for New York's future as voters prepare for the November 4th election. [Automatically generated summary]
Welcome to the final general election debate in the race for mayor of New York City.
I'm Errol Lewis, political anchor here at Spectrum News New York One, and we're coming to you live from the LaGuardia Performing Arts Center at LaGuardia Community College in Queens.
Over the next 90 minutes, you're going to hear from the leading mayoral candidates about the biggest issues in New York, including the cost of living, the education crisis, and public safety.
I'm joined tonight by Katie Honen of the news organization, The City, and Brian Lehrer of WNYC Radio and Gothamist.
unidentified
Tonight's debate is brought to you by the New York City Campaign Finance Board, the city agency that administers the public matching funds program.
It's also sponsored by Spectrum News New York One, WNYC Gothamist, and the news site The City and Spectrum Noticias, and our co-sponsors, the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY, the Center for New York City and State Law at New York Law School, the Museum of the City of New York, and John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
You can watch tonight's debate without a paywall on ny1.com.
It is also being broadcast on NYC TV, WNYC Radio, C-SPAN, the Spectrum News YouTube page, and thecity.nyc.
It's in Spanish on Spectrum Noticias and YouTube.
The candidates joining us tonight have met a fundraising threshold established by the Campaign Finance Board.
The seat is currently held by Eric Adams, who has decided not to run for re-election.
In alphabetical order, Andrew Cuomo is a former governor of New York, running on an independent line.
Zaran Mamdani is the Democratic nominee, representing parts of Queens in the State Assembly since 2021.
New York, Thank Moderators00:04:29
unidentified
And Curtis Liwa is the Republican nominee and the founder of the Guardian Angels.
The rules you see on your screen right now have been agreed to by all of the candidates.
Each candidate will deliver an opening statement of up to 45 seconds, and then answers to our questions will generally be limited to 60 seconds with a chance for rebuttals.
Candidates will have an opportunity to ask one opponent one question in our cross-examination round.
So let's begin.
This will be the last time all three candidates will be together on stage.
The next mayor will be sworn into office 71 days from now on January 1st, 2026.
He will inherit a city with an affordability crisis, a tense relationship with the federal government, and millions of New Yorkers who very likely did not support him.
Let's begin our debate with your opening statements to viewers.
You have 45 seconds.
The order was determined by a random drawing on live television this morning, and we'll begin with Curtis Liwa.
And I know many of you hardworking New Yorkers, you tell me you've been pushed aside, you've been silenced.
These are the people that have all the money, all the connections.
They've made their backroom deals, but we have something more important.
We have you, the people.
And we're not going to be silenced anymore.
We're going to fight.
Tonight, I want you to look at the content of my policies, to know that I've served this city for more than 50 years, the city that I love.
And I'm going to share with you my vision to make New York City safer again, to make New York City more affordable again, and where everybody once again can live the American dream.
New York is the greatest city on the globe, but we are at a pivotal moment.
And the voters are going to have to decide in this election what candidate has the plan to save this city and what candidate can get it done, not just talk about it.
My main opponent has no new ideas.
He has no new plan.
It's built a Blasio rehash, and we know how that turned out.
He's never run anything, managed anything.
He's never had a real job.
I will hire 5,000 new police, build 500,000 new units.
I will cut taxes.
I will grow jobs.
And I will end this hate-mongering and division that is tearing this city apart because that's not who we are as New Yorkers.
Thank you to the moderators and thank you to New Yorkers for tuning in.
I know you'd rather be watching the Knicks.
While there are three candidates on this stage, you will hear only two messages.
My opponents, who spend more time trying to convince the other to drop out than actually proposing their own policies, will speak only of the past, because that's all that they know.
I am the sole candidate running with a vision for the future of this city.
Andrew Cuomo will spend much of tonight attacking me.
He is a desperate man, lashing out because he knows that the one thing he's always cared about, power, is now slipping away from him.
He will amplify right-wing talking points.
He will share conspiracy theories, and he will do these things to make you feel that this should keep you up at night.
But I've been spending the last year listening to New Yorkers, and I know what actually keeps you up.
It's whether or not you can afford to live a safe and dignified life in this city.
Let's start tonight with some breaking news that happened yesterday afternoon when federal agents descended on Canal Street, arresting street vendors who have been selling counterfeit designer merchandise for as long as any of us can remember.
ICE is a reckless entity that cares little for the law and even less for the people that they're supposed to serve.
What we need to be doing here in our city is to end the chapter of collaboration between City Hall and the federal government, which we've seen under Mayor Adams.
What we need to do is actually pass the street vending reform bills that have been in the city council, some of which that this mayor has actually overridden.
That's an example of how we can both protect street vendors, ensure quality of life, and leave no stone unturned in delivering for the people of the city, as opposed to working with a president who's looking to declare war on those same people.
President Trump has been commenting on this race and all of you on a regular basis.
He's been less than glowing when talking about each of you, especially you, Mr. Mohamdani.
I'd like you each to describe whatever combination of defiance, diplomacy, and cooperation you will use as mayor if President Trump continues to increase the federal government's role in the affairs of our city while also threatening to decrease funding.
Yeah, the difference on this question is I've actually lived it and I've done it with President Trump over many years through the most difficult situation that this country has gone through, COVID plus.
You're wrong.
You're going to have to confront President Trump.
He is hyper-aggressive and he is going to overstep his bounds.
And you are going to have to confront him.
And you can beat him.
I confronted him and I have beaten him.
He was going to quarantine New York during COVID.
And I stopped him.
He was going to cut aid to federal programs and I stopped him.
But you also want to be in a place where you can cooperate on good things because we need federal help if we're going to save our city and rebuild our city.
President Trump has to respect you.
He sent the National Guard into 20 cities.
City he didn't send it into?
New York.
Because I talked to him and I said, we don't need you here.
He has said he'll take over New York if Mondami wins.
And he will, because he has no respect for him.
He thinks he's a kid and he's going to knock him on his tucas.
So it is a balance.
But you're going to have to be adversarial when you need to, but you want to cooperate to get good things done in this city.
We first just heard from the Republican candidate for mayor, and then we heard from Donald Trump's puppet himself, Andrew Cuomo.
You could turn on TV any day of the week, and you will hear Donald Trump share that his pick for mayor is Andrew Cuomo.
And he wants Andrew Cuomo to be the mayor, not because it will be good for New Yorkers, but because it will be good for him.
Look, Donald Trump ran on three promises.
He ran on creating the single largest deportation force in American history.
He ran on going after his political enemies, and he ran on lowering the cost of living.
If he wants to talk to me about the third piece of that agenda, I will always be ready and willing.
But if he wants to talk about how to pursue the first and second piece of that agenda at the expense of New Yorkers, I will fight him every single step of the way.
Brian wants to talk to you about some important issues on the minds of New Yorkers.
unidentified
Hi, candidates.
Thank you for coming tonight.
Yeah, and the cost of living is our next topic.
You've all cited it as a major factor.
And of course, so many New Yorkers are experiencing this, especially when it comes to rising housing costs.
And many New Yorkers were shocked this week as a new report from the group Advocates for Children revealed that about 154,000 New York City public school students have been homeless at some point during the last year.
65,000 lived in homeless shelters.
Even more were in doubled-up situations with no home of their own.
It's never been over 150,000 before, they tell us.
And it amounts to one in seven New York City kids.
As mayor, how would each of you tackle this problem to help this vulnerable population?
And in this round, we're going to go Mr. Momdani, Mr. Cuomo, Mr. Sleewa.
This is a stain on our city to see this many children in our public school system be homeless and to know that this is the ninth consecutive year that it's more than 100,000 of those children.
What we need to do is ensure that next year is not the same.
And we are going to do that by building the housing necessary such that New Yorkers are not priced out of this city or forced to live in shelters.
And that's why my campaign is going to deliver 200,000 new affordable homes across the five boroughs, all while freezing the rent for more than 2 million rent-stabilized tenants.
Now, in the public school system, we also have a program called Every Child and Family is Known.
It links a child who is living in a homeless shelter with an employee of the public school system.
It also links that employee with the child's family.
It's been shown to increase attendance records, self-esteem, a level of belonging in that school system.
I am going to increase that pilot program to more than 200 schools, and we're going to do it because we have to deliver for these children.
But let's get back on topic because I'm the only candidate up here who's been into many of the over 300 Department of Homeless Services shelters and the family shelters are unsafe for the families there.
We have to make them safer.
We have to bring teachers into the shelter.
Many times, the mothers or the guardian have to get on bus after bus and take them to a school that's two or two and a half hours away.
This is a horror situation that's taking place.
And we have to prioritize this because this number of homeless children is going to grow.
It takes five years to build affordable housing.
We need to address it in the shelters itself to be able to handle it so that the teachers can come in, whether they're public school teachers, charter school teachers, and I know there are a number of parochial school teachers who love children who would volunteer their efforts to do that.
unidentified
We're going to give it to Katie Honen now to ask about another aspect of affordable housing.
We're going to switch to the millions of New Yorkers who are renters, specifically those in rent-regulated apartments.
There are more than a million New Yorkers living in these units, most of them rent-stabilized.
Mr. Mamdani, you've proposed a rent freeze for these tenants.
Mr. Cuomo, you don't support that, and you've proposed a new means test for having a rent-stabilized apartment.
Mr. Mamdani, our question: How can you know in advance what the balance between landlord needs and tenant needs will be in future years?
We've seen a lot of inflation in recent years.
Haven't small landlords felt that pinch as well?
And then we have other questions for the other candidates.
You know, we've seen time and again mayors use their power with the rent guidelines board to hike the rent on those same more than 2 million New Yorkers.
This same rent guidelines board did a study that found that landlords of those units had seen their profits increase by more than 12 percent.
Their response: hike the rent on rent-stabilized tenants who have a median household income of $60,000.
I believe that tenants across our city deserve relief, and I also believe that city government can work to alleviate the pressures for landlords of those units without having to put that burden on those same tenants.
It's possible to keep New Yorkers in this city and to help landlords with rising insurance costs, water bills, Con Edison, and a broken property tax system.
unidentified
Thank you.
Mr. Sliwa, what's your proposal for helping New Yorkers with the historically high rent burdens in either stabilized or market rate units?
Well, the first thing, we have 6,000 empty apartments in NYCHA.
That is a sin.
That's what the mayor can control right away.
We need to move those families with children in.
For those who live in rent-stabilized apartments and have their rent subsidized, Zoran Mandami, we need to make sure that the big realtors have to pay a vacancy tax because they're holding off on those apartments.
They're not putting them out into the marketplace because they want to flip the building.
Not for the mid-sized landlords or the small landlords.
They need the help.
And there are a number of people in the outer boroughs.
They own a home.
They live on the property.
They're not absentee landlords.
Two, three, four apartments.
And they're deciding not to put them in the marketplace when somebody either leaves or dies because they have to deal with tenant-landlord court, which is an absolute nightmare for small landlords.
We got to make sure it's a fair playing field so that the tenants are protected, but the landlords are protected so they're not stuck with squatters for four, five, or six years, which destroys their equity and forces them to leave.
unidentified
Thank you.
Mr. Cuomo, you signed a law in 2019 repealing a means test to live in a rent-stabilized apartment.
What's your position now and what changed in that?
You know, if you want a candidate for mayor who tells you everything that he cannot do, then Andrew Cuomo should be your choice.
If you want a candidate for mayor who will use every tool at their disposal, including the nine appointees at the Rent Guidelines Board, all of whom are appointed by the mayor, then I am the candidate for you.
Candidates, right now, we are just blocks away from the site of the Long Island City rezoning plan, which has been under consideration for a decade at this point, and in its latest version would create 15,000 new apartments.
That plan, like the recently passed City of Yes five borough rezoning, reflects a reality that hundreds of thousands of units, as many as 1 million new units, will be needed in New York City over the next 10 years.
What is your plan to get new units built quickly?
And the order of this will be Mr. Cuomo, then Mr. Sliwa, then Mr. Mamdani.
Sliwa said before it takes five years to build affordable housing.
No, it doesn't.
No, it shouldn't.
That's an incompetent government.
You can actually get competent government and well-managed government.
I built LaGuardia Airport, even though he doesn't like it, in four years.
Okay?
So don't tell me it takes five years to build a housing unit.
You have to redo HPD.
You have to change the entire organizational structure.
You have the zoning, but you have to start hundreds, if not thousands, of sites simultaneously.
Private sector developers, partner with not-for-profits, partner with CDCs, use city-owned sites, use air rights, make a deal with the unions.
But this has to be the number one priority.
The way I did Second Avenue Subway or the Mario Como Bridge or the Kosciasco Bridge, this project is thousands of housing developments being accelerated, expedited, facilitated at one time.
And we need 500,000 units.
That's the way you're going to make New York City affordable and still allow the talent to come here.
I'm the only candidate here on the stage who is opposed to the city of yes.
Both my adversaries are for it.
Make sure on Election Day when you turn over your ballot and you have the initiatives, you vote no.
And you know how oftentimes I've been at King's, how are you going to work with the Democratic-controlled city council?
I, Adrian Adams, and the predominant Democrats, including many of them very liberal and progressive, believe no to yes.
I have a simple plan.
It takes a year.
We have 25 empire state buildings that would be empty and just have office space.
It'll never be used because business doesn't operate the way it used to.
Retrofit them to affordable apartments.
Most are in Manhattan.
The infrastructure is there.
You set up a partnership with developers.
It'll put men and women to work and you'll get your affordable apartments a lot quicker and not be a burden to the outer boroughs and the residential communities because you're in the back pockets, Andrew, of the developers who wine-dined and pocketlined you.
We need to build more housing all across New York City.
Today, New York City builds about four houses for a thousand people.
Jersey City is at seven.
Tokyo is at about 10.
We need to do this by streamlining the processes of private sector construction across the city, by ensuring we're building more around hubs of mass transit.
And we also need to ensure that the public sector is building truly affordable housing.
And what I mean by truly affordable is housing that is built with the median household income in mind, which is $70,000 for a family of four.
And that's why my administration will do exactly that, scaling up programs we already had in HPD, like senior affordable rental apartments, SARA, like ELA, extremely low-level affordability.
These are the kinds of programs that will deliver a city that New Yorkers can actually afford.
I know that we desperately need to build more housing in this city, and I also know that the jobs we create in the building of that housing should be good jobs as well.
Candidates, the rhetoric on the campaign trail has become more heated in recent weeks.
We have reached a point where two of the candidates on stage here tonight have armed security.
I would like to spend a few minutes to see if we can dial down the rhetoric.
Mr. Mamdani, some Jewish New Yorkers continue to say that your comments on Israel and the war in Gaza leave them feeling unsafe and concerned about their future in our city.
Recently, several prominent New York rabbis took the unusual step of denouncing your candidacy, including the rabbi of the Park Avenue Synagogue in Manhattan and Rabbi Michael Miller, the longtime leader of the Jewish Community Relations Council, who is a friend to many of us.
Do you have any regrets about how you've dealt with these issues?
And will your long-standing views on the subject get in the way of your ability to be an effective mayor?
I look forward to being a mayor for every single person that calls this city home.
Not just those who voted for me in the Democratic primary, not just those that vote for me in this general election, but all 8.5 million New Yorkers.
And that includes Jewish New Yorkers who may have concerns or opposition to the positions that I've shared about Israel and Palestine.
You know, just a few weeks ago, I was on the M57, the slowest bus in New York City.
And as I was seated there, there was a speech therapist who was sitting next to me.
She told me that she was Jewish.
She said that her daughter was a huge fan, but that she was not yet decided on who she was going to vote for.
And she shared to me about her fears in this city about rising anti-Semitism.
And I told her what I will tell New Yorkers today, which is that I will be the mayor who doesn't just protect Jewish New Yorkers, but also celebrates and cherishes them, who doesn't just increase funding to hate crime prevention programs by 800%, who doesn't just ensure that the NYPD are outside of synagogues and temples on the high holy days, but also actually delivers on the implementation of the hidden voices curriculum in our school system so that children in this city learn about the beauty and the breadth of the Jewish experience right here in the five boroughs.
Many New Yorkers have serious grievances with Israel and the way the Israeli government under Benjamin Netanyahu has conducted the war in Gaza and expanded settlements in the West Bank.
What would you say to and how would you handle New Yorkers who are in the streets, if you were mayor, protesting the actions of the Netanyahu government?
You know, I've heard from Jewish New Yorkers about their fears about anti-Semitism in this city.
And what they deserve is a leader who takes it seriously, who roots it out of these five boroughs, not one who weaponizes it as a means by which to score political points on a debate stage.
The mother of my two youngest sons who were raised Jewish.
Melinda Katz is prosecuting this person who came up and tried to do you harm.
But let me speak on behalf of my two sons.
When they've heard some of the statements you've made, like in support of global jihad, and I hear some people out there saying the Jews, their time is due, which means the same thing.
They're frightened, they're scared.
They view you as the arsonists who fan the flames of anti-Semitism.
They cannot suddenly accept the fact that you're coming in like a firefighter and you're going to put out these flames.
You've got a lot of explaining to do, a lot of apologizing to do.
My sons are afraid.
Their family, their friends, many in the Jewish community are concerned if you could become mayor because they don't think when anti-Semitism rears its ugly head, which it's now doing more than ever before, that you will have the ability to come in and put out those flames of hate.
And the next section is some individual political questions, one for each of you.
Let me start with you, Mr. Cuomo.
Then Katie will ask a question to Mr. Sleewa and Mr. Mandani.
Mr. Cuomo, the last time most New Yorkers saw you before this campaign was when you resigned your seat as governor under scandal in 2021.
The most recent Quinnipiac University poll in this race shows that 54% of likely voters say you're unethical.
Meanwhile, you also have strained relations with Governor Hokul, State Attorney General Letitia James, and others.
What would you say right now to New Yorkers who have questions about your moral compass and concerns that you cannot effectively work with other elected officials?
Yeah, well, first, you somewhat misstated the facts, but I resigned because there was allegations made.
I didn't want to waste the time and distract state government.
I knew it was going to take a long time to sort out.
I left, which I thought was respectful to state government.
We sorted it out legally.
Nothing came from any of the allegations.
I was dropped from the cases.
You know that.
We've had this discussion four times, but you like to talk about the past rather than yesterday.
I chose Governor Kathy Hochul.
I would have no problem working with her.
The legislature, I got 11 budgets passed on time.
Most in modern political history.
They haven't gotten one done on time since I was there.
So don't tell me who knows to work, who knows how to work with the legislature.
And a mayor being able to deal with that legislature is key, because don't kid yourself, I've watched every governor and mayor since Ed Koch.
There is a tension between the city and the state.
The city's arguing for its budgets.
The state is saying no.
And the city has been getting screwed by the state.
And that has to change.
And the city has to be doing better.
unidentified
Thank you.
Katie?
Mr. Sleewell, to many New Yorkers, you've often presented yourself as more of a well-known New York character than a serious policy expert.
Your critics have said your candidacy is making it more likely that Zaran Mamdani can win the election.
What do you say to them and to others who feel that while your name recognition has seen a boost, your candidacy is not helpful to New Yorkers, including those who share your views?
Number one, I have 13 campaign offices open throughout the outer boroughs.
You see the excitement and energy of the working class people that I represent.
I am the Republican populist candidate representing the working class.
And I'm also, Katie, the candidate on the independent line, first ever put together by my wife, Nancy, who loves animals like so many.
Save the animals.
No-kill shelters.
Animal abusers go to jail.
So people know that I'm not just running to protect people, which has been my life as leader of the Guardian Angels.
I'm there to protect our pets and animals.
Because remember, Mahatma Gandhi said, a society that does not take care of its animals does not take care of its people.
Homeless, emotionally disturbed veterans.
I'm out there every day tending to their needs with their guardian angels, doing things that the city and state should have been doing a long time ago, but neglected them and instead spent $7 billion on migrants that we don't even know.
That is a disgrace.
We should be there for our own people who are suffering and wallowing in desperation and despair.
Okay, Mr. Malgani, you have criticized the politics of the past where leaders either avoid taking a stand on a key issue or try to be all things to all people.
But at times during this campaign, you've carefully avoided answering tough questions.
We saw an instance just a few minutes ago when I asked about how you plan to vote on those ballot initiatives next month.
We've asked whether you support a major rezoning push for part of Queens, some of which is in your district.
You've been unclear about how you think the city's schools should be run, its governance structure.
I've heard the both of them again fighting like kids in the schoolyard.
Zoron, your resume could fit on a cocktail napkin.
And Andrew, your failures could fill a public school library in New York City.
Okay, go ahead.
unidentified
We're going to move now to public safety.
And there was some breaking news from the New York Times that you, Mr. Mondani, would ask Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch to stay on as police commissioner if you are indeed mayor.
I wanted to confirm that that was true.
And for Mr. Cuomo and Mr. Sliwa, would you ask the current police commissioner to stay on if you were elected?
My administration will be relentless in its pursuit of safety and affordability for every New Yorker.
And the delivery of that will require us to put together a team of the best and the brightest.
Eric Adams stacked the upper echelons of the NYPD with corruption and incompetence.
Commissioner Tisch took on a broken status quo, started to deliver accountability, rooting out corruption and reducing crime across the five boroughs.
I've said time and again that my litmus test for that position will be excellence and the alignment will be of that position.
And I am confident that under a Momdani administration, we would continue to deliver on that same mission and do so while creating the Department of Community Safety to ensure that mental health experts were the ones responding to the mental health crisis because safety and justice is at the cornerstone of our pursuit of public safety and in doing so we will also be able to deliver our agenda for affordability.
unidentified
Thank you and very briefly, quickly, Mr. Sliwa and Mr. Cuomo, would you ask Commissioner Tisch to stay on if you are elected mayor?
I don't believe Zoran when he says he would ask her to stay on.
The DSA's position, his position has been to defund this band of police.
She wouldn't take that.
His current position.
Today's position was freeze the budget.
That would cause a reduction in police.
She has called for more police.
I've called for more police.
Mayor Adams has called for more police.
So their philosophies are totally in Congress.
In Congress, DSA calls for eliminating misdemeanours.
He wants to decriminalize prostitution.
I don't think she would support any of that.
unidentified
Well, we can't speak for her.
She's not here, but I will ask the public safety question.
And we'll start with you, Mr. Sliwa.
The issues of crime and disorder on the streets, the NYPD says the crime is going down in all major categories, most major categories, but to New Yorkers, they're still concerned with disorder and their own unique perception of crime.
Do you think addressing quality of life concerns helps prevent more serious crimes?
And how would you deploy the city's police force to deal with those serious violent crimes and also quality of life offenses like disorderly conduct and retail theft?
I'm the only candidate that's on the subway each and every day.
I've yet to hear from one New Yorker who said they feel safer either in the subways or the streets.
And Eric Adams constantly hackering at us like it's the perception, the perception.
No, it's the reality of crime.
We need 7,000 police officers.
We are badly understaffed.
We need to get police officers in the subways actually patrolling the moving cars where people are most threatened and most frightened.
And we need to bring back the homeless outreach unit that was disbanded when de Blasio took a billion dollars out of the budget.
These were men and women police officers who already had with them medical nurses and health care practitioners, but it was de Blasio who abolished it and they've been talking about bringing something back ever since, but they never do it because I'm out there in the subways every day and I never see it.
And when I'm mayor, it gets done on day one.
The homeless outreach unit is put back into the NYPD.
You know, when I hear from New Yorkers of where they feel least safe, they will often tell me the subway system.
And when they explain those moments to me, what they are often explaining is a mental health crisis in our city and a crisis of homelessness that has only continued to grow.
And that is why, at the heart of our public safety agenda, is a groundbreaking proposal to not only reduce crime, but address these very moments of unease for New Yorkers across the five boroughs by creating a Department of Community Safety that will be focused on the mental health crisis, focused on homelessness, and will ensure that police officers can focus on serious crimes.
Because in 2020, the response time for those officers was less than 11 minutes.
Today, it's closer to 16 minutes.
And that's because every year they are now responding to 200,000 mental health calls when those are calls that could by and large be taken by experts trained on responding to that very crisis.
No matter how many times Andrew Cuomo describes it as my idea or my policy, I have never once stated that we were not going to prosecute misdemeanours.
And that is what you see from the former governor is someone who spends more time talking about the platforms of other organizations and other individuals than the one that I've actually put forward or the one that he is supposed to be running on.
Misdemeanors are felonies, no cash bail, releases him back into the streets.
And both of you afford no cash misters.
unidentified
Mr. I want to move on.
You'll get your opportunities, I think, because I want to bring up a particular crime concern, and that is violence among younger New Yorkers, specifically teenagers.
My question is, what is your stance on the statewide raise the age law, which increased the age of adult criminal responsibility from 16 years old to 18 for most crimes?
Police Commissioner Tish says, quote, the mentality on the street is that nothing happens to those under 18 who possess a gun.
So would you support modifying raise the age in any way?
And Mr. Mamdani, since you just announced that you would invite Commissioner Tish to stay on, would you go along with her on this?
I would not support changes to the state's legislation, and I would not support them because the major issue with the implementation of that legislation has been the fact that there is hundreds of millions of dollars that was supposed to be delivered alongside that law that is still languishing in Albany.
And I am excited to be the next mayor of the city to finally fight for the money that this city is owed to ensure that we deliver it to our young people across the five boroughs.
Once again, the architect of Raise the Age, Governor Cuomo, the apprentice to him, Johan.
It's personal for me.
My oldest son, Anthony, last October was the victim of a vicious gang assault that could have killed him.
And what happened to these juveniles?
Cut free because they went to family court, not criminal court.
So how can both of you look at me?
I almost lost my oldest son to gang violence, and the perpetrators went to family court and got a little pat on the wrist and was sent home to do it again and again.
No, we need to start charging juveniles who commit violent crime in criminal court, and I'll appoint criminal court judges who follow the law and don't just release them because of no cash bail.
Okay, candidates, I've got individual questions for you, and we're going to try and pick up the pace a little bit here.
I'd like you really just explain kind of where you're coming from.
Mr. Mamdani, you've called for reorganizing the NYPD to create this Department of Community Safety that, among other things, would handle calls involving people in mental health distress.
Your opponents have disparaged this as sending social workers rather than cops into dangerous situations like domestic violence disputes.
Explain really what you have in mind, and please include any evidence that this approach would work.
What my opponents are clinging to is the past, because that's all that they know.
What I am proposing is something that will address the needs of New Yorkers in the present.
We speak and hear from New Yorkers across the five boroughs who outline how the mental health crisis is one of the major challenges in this city.
And yet what we have in our city is asking those same police officers who are being asked to respond to shootings, respond to murders, to also respond to these calls.
I trust the dispatchers who would be receiving these calls to make the determination as to whether there was any indication of violence.
If there is no indication of a threat of violence, then we would set the mental health experts and providers to respond to those same incidents.
The reason I believe in the efficacy of this approach is because of the fact that it has been delivered elsewhere in the country.
So no matter how often you hear those on this stage tell you that something cannot be done, know that there are others in this same country who have seen it, and it is time for that same policy to come to New York City.
Okay, Mr. Schliwa and Mr. Cuomo, I have a similar question for both of you.
The department currently feels about 33,000 officers down from 37,000 in 2018.
Public safety budget approaching $10 billion.
Mr. Sliwa, you want to hire 7,000 more cops.
Mr. Cuomo says 5,000 more cops.
Each of you, make the case for why you think that's necessary, especially given the fact that for crime decline, for much of New York City, crime declines over the last 20 years happened while the size of the force was also declining and not rising.
This is New York City, a major metropolitan area with thousands of 911 calls, domestic abuse, emotionally disturbed persons, and you want to have social workers go out there and risk their life.
And by the way, they're not going to get the results that a trained professional police officer can get.
That's why we so desperately need 7,000 new cops.
We'll use the Boston motto, which is pay now in lieu of taxes.
They do it at Harvard University and the other universities.
We'll raise a billion dollars, get them vetted, trained, and out into the streets so they can be seen in all the neighborhoods and most importantly, do the job they were sworn to do.
And I will make sure that their insurance, the qualified immunity that was stripped from them, the only civil servants who are not protected by the taxpayer, is returned so that they can freely go out and do what they were trained to do.
It's to protect all of the people of New York City.
We've had mentally ill homeless people going back to the Billy Boggs case, right, under the Ed Koch administration.
I ran homeless services not just for David Dinkins, but also for President Clinton.
I've worked in every state, all the large cities, on all homeless programs.
I've spent dozens of nights outbringing, trying to bring mentally ill people in.
It can be done with mental health workers and police workers.
You cannot tell from a phone call if a person is going to be dangerous.
And I have seen personally many times a person who seemed very calm and sedate explode into rage.
Why?
Because this is sometimes a symptom of mental illness.
So there's nothing new here.
It just has to be done and managed.
Yes, you need more police.
You need more police, first of all, Errol, because they're quitting because there are not enough to staff the force and they're working overtime and weekends and their family life is destroyed.
I would actually build on the city council's progress in holding the apps accountable, like DoorDash and Grubhub, to ensure that there weren't incentives for breaking those street tax rates.
But we know that somebody's got to pay for it, and that's you, the taxpayers.
And that's going to lead to bankruptcy.
The only reason that Zoran is on the stage is because of the failed Governor Cuomo, who was rejected by the Democrats in the primary and rejected by 13 women who charged you with sexual harassment.
I'm not sure what the man said, but the situation, my legal situation, as we discussed before, was fully litigated.
I was dropped from the cases.
If anyone has a legal situation to talk about, I think it's Mr. Sliwa, who runs the Guardian Angels, and apparently has a charitable donation, but never filed any tax returns for the Guardian Angels and has been accepting charitable donations, which is just a crime and tax fraud.
So I think that's the person who I was explaining to do.
My politics is consistent, and my politics is built on a belief in human rights for all people.
And that extends to queer and trans New Yorkers, and it extends to queer and trans Ugandans.
And had I known that the first deputy minister was the architect of that legislation, I would not have taken that photo.
And yet I also know that this constant attempt to smear and slander me is an attempt to also distract from the fact that unlike myself, you do not actually have a platform or a set of policies to protect those same New Yorkers here.
All you have are the insults that you have lobbed at every single opportunity you have.
The next mayor will oversee the largest school system in the United States, as you know, with roughly 900,000 students, thousands of schools, and billions of dollars in budget.
We have an education question for each of you.
Mr. Mamdani, you said you would give up mayoral control of schools and share decision-making with various stakeholders.
But in the last debate, you said you're still for mayoral accountability for educational outcomes.
This has confused some people about how you can give up final authority but still hold yourself accountable.
I remain opposed to mayoral control, and I also believe that the mayor is accountable for that which happens in this city.
I will not shirk that accountability, even when we are putting together a system that has greater involvement for parents, for educators, for students.
Look, one in 300 Americans is a student in the New York City public school system.
This is a system where we are failing to deliver excellence to students, to teachers, to parents, and it is time to have a mayor who understands not only the crisis in front of us, but the fact that we have to change our ways if we want to change our results.
And that is what we are running on, a plan for the future, not to simply relitigate the past.
unidentified
Mr. Sleela, you recently proposed reducing the education budget by $10 billion, or about 25%, to help pay for tax cuts.
But your website includes things like, quote, hire more therapists, expand services for students with learning differences, build new vocational high schools, restore arts programs, expand athletic programs, and increase teacher pay to attract and retain top talent.
Those are all exact quotes from your website.
How do you defund the Education Department by 25% to cut taxes, add in the Trump administration's various cuts, and do all those expansions at the same time?
Well, let me tell you, you have a bureaucracy at the Tweet Courthouse, perfect place to house the Department of Education because of the corruption in the top ranks.
You have 13 deputy chancellors.
You have about 50 department heads.
Nobody at this school level ever deals with them.
$41,000 we pay per student, and teachers still have to reach into their pockets to pay for basic supplies.
You cut at the top contracts that have been negotiated that have not been overseen.
You will save millions and millions of dollars.
And yes, you open up the schools as it was when I went to public school, after-school center, night center, weekend center, not just sports, but culture, plays, musicals.
People used to be able to take instruments home when they were in band and orchestra.
That attracted children.
One-third of our children don't even come to school each day.
And we need more vocational training like we had when I was growing up.
That's been depleted.
And more charter schools.
We need to raise the cap and have more charter schools for the children who have been waiting to get in for years.
unidentified
Katie has an education question from Mr. Carbo.
Thanks, Brian.
Mr. Cuomo, there's currently a state law to reduce class sizes in the city.
You recently described the law as, quote, reckless and proposed that popular schools be exempted from this law.
You also want to start closing low-performing schools, one of the most controversial policies of Mayor Bloomberg.
Would you defy the class size law?
And if you close existing schools rather than work to improve them, what specifically helps the kids learn more and where?
The common denominator on all these things is the question is, what is your plan to change things and what is your ability and experience to do it?
These are management challenges and I have managed large bureaucracies.
The Department of Education, we lost 1 million students.
What's happening is young families have to make a decision when their child has to go to school.
They're deciding to go to the suburbs, go to Jersey.
They're not going to sacrifice their kid.
So it is a terrible problem for the entire city, the shrinking public school system.
I would double the gifted and talented programs, double the number of specialized high schools, keep the SHSAT, and keep mayoral control.
It is wholly inconsistent to say, I think it's a top priority, but I want to give up mayoral control, but I want to be a mayor who runs grocery stores.
You fight for the taxpayers and you fight to keep inmates on Rikers Island so that we don't just have to lock up toothpaste in New York City, but we lock up inmates.
Zoron has said he'd honor the law closing Rikers in 2027.
You can't.
You can't.
Unless you intend to release all the people on Rikers Island, which is the Democratic Socialist policy.
The county jails are not going to be built.
It was a mistake.
The whole plan was a mistake.
They are years late, billions over budget.
I would say scrap the county jails, build new jails on Rikers Island, provide ferry and bus transportation for people from the other boroughs to visit on Rikers Island, and then use the existing four sites for commercial residential.
But you cannot close Rikers on 2027 because there's no place to put the people unless you're going to release 7,000 people.
There is no one on this stage that is saying that.
Yet Andrew Cuomo will repeat it again and again.
What I have said time and again, I'll repeat it again, is that yes, we have to close Rikers Island.
Rikers Island is a stain on the history of this city.
And that this current administration has made it nearly impossible to do so by the stipulated timeline.
So what I will do is everything in my power to try and meet that deadline, knowing that Eric Adams has made it so difficult because he's had no interest in actually following through on it.
And as much as you will hear about experience and running a government, what Andrew Cuomo doesn't seem to understand is the city has already entered into contracts for these borough-based jails, and to end those contracts would be to incur massive fiscal penalties, but that's not something that he seems to care about, even as he speaks about the fiscal stewardship of this city.
My next question is about another law that's already on the books.
The city has a climate law, Local Law 97, that will require a large percentage of the buildings in the city to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 40% by 2030 or face financial penalties.
As you know, some co-ops, condos, and landlords are afraid of crushing expenses, but buildings account for 70% of the city's climate pollution emissions, so reduction would need to include that sector.
You all have taken different positions on this.
I want our viewers and listeners to hear each of you, starting with Mr. Cuomo in this case.
Would you abide by and make others abide by Local Law 97 as it stands?
The climate crisis is one of the most pressing crises facing this city, and we deserve to take it on with the urgency it requires.
It is right now easier to pay the fine than to actually comply with this legislation.
We have to ensure that we make it easier for condo and co-op owners to follow these laws, and we do that by eliminating the application fees for J51, by extending that tax credit, by also creating a one-stop shop in New York City government that procures at a large scale heat pumps and the very kind of infrastructure needed to comply.
We've seen this happen before with clean energy work that's been done in Woodside houses.
It's time to bring that kind of work right here so that we can ensure full compliance with local law engineers.
unidentified
I read that you're proposing the city buy those heat pumps and other tech in bulk and give them to landlords and other buildings for free.
It was the nuclear power plant most closely located to the densest population.
There was no nuclear plant on the globe that close to a city.
There were 20 million people in what was called the kill zone.
Before I became Attorney General, there had been a number of lawsuits to stop it.
What we did is we brought cables down from upstate New York down the Hudson River.
We have nuclear upstate.
We're in rural areas to bring that nuclear power down the cables and then on that basis substitute for Indian Point's power.
unidentified
Yes or no.
When FGC rates are too high to pay because of you and Jewel Justin, yes or no, you need to support new nuclear power plants to help bring down the rising cost of utilities in New York State.
Ms. Condani, you're proposing to raise the city's minimum wage to $30 an hour by 2030.
How would you get the state legislature to go along with your plan?
And do you think it's realistic to feel that a small business owner would have to pay every employee this amount, especially when the city currently doesn't mandate that figure for its own public employees?
So this would be something where the city would have to start doing so as well, because any law that we want New Yorkers to follow, the city should be following it itself.
And the reason that we put forward $30 by 2030 is that that's the minimum that a New Yorker needs to be paid to be able to afford to live in this city.
And what we are looking at right now is the possibility of the place that we know and love becoming a museum of where working class people used to be able to live.
Our proposal that we've put forward would be phased in over a longer period of time for small business owners to ensure that they could deal with this.
And it's also one that we are confident we would be able to accomplish because of the fact that we are seeing from New Yorkers time and time again the absence of it is pushing them to live in Jersey City, to live in Pennsylvania, to live in Connecticut because they can't afford to live in New York City.
unidentified
Thank you.
And for Mr. Sleewa and Mr. Cuomo, if you're not in favor of a $30 minimum wage, what are your plans to raise the salaries of workers in New York City?
First off, Zorhan Mandami deals with fantasy, not reality.
Look at all the Uber drivers.
Look at all the taxi drivers, the Lyft drivers.
They will now have driverless cars.
That's what they're pushing.
AI that's going to be wiping out so many jobs, especially for young men and women who went to school, got their four years of college, two-year degree, and they're making $155,000, and then they get wiped out.
You know what the corporate sector is going to do.
They're going to bring in robotics.
Zoron, stop dealing with fantasy and start dealing with reality.
You're pushing businesses out because you want to tax them.
I'm the only one here who wants to cut the corporate taxes, the income tax, the property tax we can cut in order to keep business here.
But if you raise the minimum wage too high, they're going to end up going in a different direction and they're not going to hire workers.
It's going to be robots and driverless cars and AI, and I'm opposed to that.
There is, Zoron does have socialist theory colliding with practical reality.
I went through this.
We raised the minimum wage to the highest in the United States of America.
New York set the bar.
We said it at $15.
Every other state said that's crazy when we did it.
People in the state said that was crazy when we did it.
But it was calibrated.
It was doable.
We phased it in in different parts of the state.
We phased it in with small businesses.
We gave them assistance.
Because if you raise it too high, and I believe 30 is too high, I would raise it to 20.
If you raise it too high, you do two things.
People lose their jobs.
You bankrupt businesses.
You're talking about basically doubling payroll.
And you can have a negative effect where literally businesses close and people lose their jobs.
And overall, again, it's another tax on corporations, another reason to leave New York, another reason to pack up the family and get our I-95 and go to South Carolina and Florida and Texas.
I want to alert our media partners, especially we're going to go over by five minutes, and we're going to have Brian lead a conversation about transit.
unidentified
Right.
And we're going to have to do this very briefly to each of you because you each have transit things to answer to.
Mr. Cuomo, you say the city should take partial control of New York City transit away from the MTA, which is mostly controlled by the state.
Would the city then have to put more of the bill?
And if this is a good idea, why didn't you propose it as governor?
You know, first I'll just say that one of the most celebrated leaders of the New York City Transit was Andy Biford, who had such a terrible experience working under Andrew Cuomo that he would rather work under Donald Trump right now.
The proposal that we have put forward addresses the fact that today, in the wealthiest city in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, one in five New Yorkers cannot afford the bus fare.
It would cost $700 million a year to make the slowest buses in the country fast and free.
And by doing so, we would generate more than double an economic revenue for New Yorkers across the city.
It would be something that would reduce assaults on bus drivers.
It would increase ridership on those buses.
And it would actually have environmental impacts as fewer New Yorkers would drive their own car or take a taxi and would instead get on the bus.
And I know all of this because I delivered it as a state assembly member who won the first free buses in New York City's history.
unidentified
And Mr. Sleeb, your website, according to my reading, has a section on transit safety, but nothing on transit service.
Everybody pays their fare, enforcement, more cops in the subway system.
And by the way, we can get more people to voluntarily actually sponsor their subway system stations, clean it up, and beautify them and add some life so the community has input into the subway that they have to go through the sleaze and slime all the time.
I would like to thank the candidates and our partners and all of you at home.
If you missed any part of this debate, you can watch it in its entirety at ny1.com and the Spectrum News YouTube channel.
Early voting is set to begin across the five boroughs on Saturday with several other races on the ballot as well, including city controller, public advocate, the five borough presidents, and members of the city council, as well as six ballot initiatives.