TAKE THE CITY'S MEET THE MAYOR QUIZ

The City has a Meet the Mayor Quiz. I urge everyone to go there and take it. It has 61 questions and while I don't think it is perfect, you will get a rough idea of where the candidates stand on issues compared to you. 

My first choice according to the City quiz is Maya Wiley. That's a bit strange since one of her major issues is defunding the police which partly involves moving school safety back to the DOE which the officers mostly don't want. I think defunding the police would not be helpful to NYC for obvious reasons. People having opportunity in life does bring crime down but not having enough police officers is not the way to make neighborhoods safe. Guess I'm a moderate on this issue. Wiley may not be my first choice on public safety, however Wiley is very good on many education issues. She wants to lower class sizes and empower School Leadership Teams. This is from her website:

Give parents and students a greater role in school governance by granting more power to School Leadership Teams (SLT).

This is needed. She also favors checks on mayoral authority over schools which would be another step forward.

Create a Commission on School Governance with parent, student, community & advocacy representatives to establish stronger checks and balances and more methods for institutionalized parent, student and community input and decision-making.

How about an elected NYC school board as about 93% of the school systems in the country have? I could never understand why this was out of the question in NYC.

The main problem with Wiley is her resume which makes it kind of hard to put much faith in what she says. It is difficult to trust her to keep her word as she was a standard MSNBC DNC cheerleader and worked for Mayor de Blasio as a lawyer.

From GothamGazette from a few years back:

Two weeks ago, Mayor Bill de Blasio and his government legal counsel, Maya Wiley, declared that a new classification had been granted to five outside advisers of the mayor, shielding communication between de Blasio and those advisers - three of whom represent clients with city business - from certain public disclosure requirements. In doing so, de Blasio provoked heightened scrutiny, even some ridicule, of his relationships with these “agents of the city,” as Wiley called them, including the question of whether they should be subject to the same conflict of interest and financial disclosures required of top city officials.

You can read more on Wiley's lawyer for de Blasio time here. Some of it is cringeworthy. This is strange but her limousine liberal background where she and her partner pay for private security in their neighborhood means she is really not that serious about cutting the NYPD and this is merely campaign rhetoric.

Scott Stringer finished second on the quiz for me even though he is the UFT's one and only choice. I have already commented on Stringer here and concluded my posting with mixed feelings but I certainly can rank him one or two in what is not a very strong field. I like his education positions and his views in other areas such as public safety are actually rational. For example, listening to actual police officers:

Establish mechanisms to receive feedback from both the community and frontline officers and incorporate these surveys into the management and oversight of precincts. 

If we actually heard what the actual officers are thinking, we may be able to push through sensible reforms.

On the other hand, Stringer having Bloomberg flunky-charter school supporter Micah Lasher as his campaign manager puts up a huge red flag. In addition, when the Board of Education returned to a majority of Borough Presidents for a while in 2009, Stringer as Manhattan BP led the push to make sure Joel Klein stayed on as Chancellor when Stringer had the power to take a stand against Bloomberg style ed deform. Stringer did appoint for most of his tenure Patrick Sullivan to the Panel for Educational Policy who was a great friend of public schools and my school in particular. 

My view on the recent sexual misconduct allegations against Stringer from alleged incidents from many years back is that the women should be listened to and taken very seriously but Stringer and everyone else deserves due process.

It is interesting to note that one group within the UFT that says they stand with survivors is not even considering what Stringer says on the issues in their mayoral campaign literature. Personally, I believe that isn't fair as people deserve every chance to defend themselves. Accusations should not be sufficient to destroy someone's career. This group suspended its own members without any due process back in 2018. They haven't come far in three years apparently on fairness but we can still hope for a brighter tomorrow within the UFT opposition.

I think I will vote Stringer 1 and Miley 2 or the other way around. I'm undecided on the order but it really doesn't matter as the chances of the race coming down to the two of them is almost zero. Wiley has surged to second in a recent poll. I have no idea why the UFT isn't pushing for a second endorsement now with Stringer so low in the polls. The left seems to be consolidating around Wiley. The AOC endorsement certainly gave her a big push. Art Chang came in third for me on the City Quiz but he doesn't have a prayer and his plan for an IEP for every student is totally unnecessary.

Please take the City Quiz for yourself. I would like to hear about who the folks who read here support but I gather many of our vocal commenters won't have rankings like mine. There should be some Fernando Mateo/Curtis Sliwa fans among our commenters.

Note that Kathryn Garcia, Andrew Yang, and Eric Adams were not in my top five, and I won't rank any of those three in my rank choices as all three of them would not look favorable to UFTers. Curtis Sliwa even finished ahead of one of those three on my list from the Quiz.