Two Mayoral Debates: Not Nearly Enough

I am ferociously proud of my colleagues who put together last week’s 90-minute debate in the race for New York City mayor — the second and final general election faceoff in this campaign — and I am more convinced than ever that, going forward, we need to have many more debates, and to make them mandatory for all major candidates.  

Final numbers aren’t in yet, but YouTube alone has registered more than 883,000 viewers of the debate I co-hosted, a number that doesn’t include the audience that connected via WNYC radio, C-SPAN, Spectrum News, Spectrum Noticias and other platforms. The first debate, hosted by WNBC and Univision, drew 922,000 viewers on broadcast and nearly 1.5 million on streaming platforms. Interest in the race reflects the magnitude of the choice voters will make on Nov. 4: New York’s strong-mayor system concentrates an outsized amount of power in a single person, who will control a 37,000-member police force; a school system with nearly 1 million students and 75,000 teachers; and a $116 billion budget that is larger than the annual spend of all but four states.

The first debate and the debate that my organization, Spectrum News, hosted along with a team that included WNYC/Gothamist and The City, were the only two question-and-answer sessions that candidates were legally required to attend as a condition of receiving millions of dollars in public matching funds from the New York City Campaign Finance Board. We did our best to explore what I call the Big Five issues: housing, public safety, the economy, public schools and public transit. But 90 minutes left little or no time to dive into many crucial issues. 

Here are half a dozen questions that got left on the cutting room floor. 

• According to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, nearly one out of every five children (18.6%) in New York City experiences food insecurity, which is especially true in the Bronx, where almost one-third of children are food insecure. But even though, on paper, New York gives every child free breakfast and lunch, New York allows principals the discretion to restrict breakfast to cafeteria-only, and to limit the time to first period or earlier. If elected, will you commit to making sure that all schoolchildren have a chance to eat free breakfast every day?
• As of last year, there were 1,600 paraprofessional vacancies — affecting multiple areas across the public school system. Paraprofessionals perform a range of functions, among them helping students with special needs with instructional and behavioral support. The union representing these workers has called for a $10,000 pay boost to attract new hires. How would you address this shortage?
• School bus delays in New York City reached a seven-year high this school year, affecting students with differing abilities the most. How would you fix this issue to make sure students don’t miss class and their families don’t end up paying for cabs to get them to school? 
• Property taxes alone constitute as much as 30% of the cost of a rent-stabilized apartment, with additional expense added by the highest property insurance premiums in America. Property taxes in particular fall under the control of local government — so exactly how will you attack that part of the affordability crisis? 
• Public health is an ever-present issue that deserves attention. Five years ago, COVID swept across the city, killing at least 46,000 New Yorkers and sickening hundreds of thousands of others. Except for criticism aimed at Andrew Cuomo for how he handled the pandemic during his time as governor, little or nothing was said during the campaign about COVID. What steps will you take to get New York City ready for its next major health crisis? 
• A decade after the launch of Vision Zero, New York has seen a drop in the number of fatalities and injuries, thanks in part to the widespread use of traffic-calming measures and infrastructure, such as protected bicycle lanes, speed cameras and pedestrian plazas. If elected, would you continue the city’s commitment to Vision Zero — and if so, what measures do you think are especially promising when it comes to improving street safety?

More is more

We discussed most of these issues, and many others, at small, non-televised mayoral forums earlier this year, sponsored by civic, professional and academic institutions with subject-matter expertise in municipal matters. In April, I moderated a panel on hunger and homelessness co-sponsored by Hunger Free America and the CUNY School of Public Health and a Vital City forum on crime and quality of life. In May, the Furman Center and the New York Housing Conference hosted a mayoral forum with a focus on the city’s housing crisis, and John Jay College held an in-depth discussion about disorder in the streets. In June, I co-moderated a candidate forum for the Jewish community at B’nai Jeshrun.  

While my co-moderators and I got a fabulous multi-month crash-course on a wide range of topics, none of these forums had 100% attendance by candidates, and most had less than 50% even in the crowded pre-primary phase of the campaign. Ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo made a point of never appearing on the same stage as his opponents, and Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani began telling forum sponsors that he wouldn’t show up unless Cuomo did. That kind of gamesmanship cheated all of us — the public, the press and the candidates — out of a chance to focus attention and analysis on municipal problems that require more than slogans, quips and talking points. 

The law that makes debate attendance mandatory for recipients of matching funds should be updated to require more debates. The Campaign Finance Board has delivered matching funds on 13 different dates this election cycle; that should translate into at least five additional mandatory forums, awarded to media sponsors the same way the big debates are. Each could be dedicated to one of the Big Five subjects, so we could hold separate discussions about housing, public safety, schools, jobs and transit.  

So far this cycle, more than $48 million in public funds has been paid out to candidates for mayor, some of whom have barely shown their faces outside of controlled, limited appearances and paid advertisements. We can and should demand more for our money.