Mark Levine Interview Transcript
A transcript of The New York Editorial Board's interview with comptroller candidate Mark Levine.
Mark Levine, the Manhattan Borough President and a candidate in the June 2025 Democratic primary for New York City Comptroller, spoke with The New York Editorial Board on the morning of May 15, 2025. (photo by Juan Manuel Benítez)
Participating journalists: Juan Manuel Benítez, Ben Max, Akash Mehta, Myles Miller, Harry Siegel, Ben Smith, Liena Zagare.
Full Transcript
City Budget, Federal Aid, State Budget
Ben Smith
We appreciate you coming in to talk to us. Harry, do you have questions.
Mark Levine
Good morning, sir.
Harry Siegel
Good morning. So Trump has his budget proposal with lots of cuts, Albany has just passed the budget raising spending substantially with a mechanism for undoing some of that, potentially, in the middle of the year, and Adams has just introduced his “best budget ever” that ups spending pretty generously. I’m interested in what your view is of this budget and, amid all this uncertainty, what you would do as comptroller to maintain accountability over it — what tools you might use.
Mark Levine
I'm extremely worried about the impact of Trump's fiscal and economic policies on New York. First, direct cuts to federal grants that we receive, some of which have already been enacted: A hundred million dollars taken from the New York City Health Department. Threats already to our education funding where poison pills are applied that would be difficult for us to accept, including a commitment to abandon any diversity curriculum. It's 2 billion a year we get from the federal government for education. There are blows to our economy that will impact tax receipts. We are heavily reliant on tourism, probably the number two or three biggest sector for the city. Cancellations from international visitors are down. That impacts the hospitality industry, retail, theater, much more.
All this is before the federal government has – before Republicans have actually passed their own budget. We're still living off the Biden budget. They're doing damage, but I think it'll pale in comparison to what they can do when they pass a budget that will pretty clearly fund tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires by reducing services to people in need, including Medicare. Four million people in New York City who rely on Medicare. Food stamps. We have 1.8 million people who rely on food stamps.
And so all of that, I think, creates real fiscal challenges on the horizon for New York and I have called for us to buttress our reserve funds to deal with it — to add a billion to our general reserve, a billion to our rainy day fund. I was quite dismayed that the mayor in his executive budget did not propose to add anything to our reserve funds. It just makes it more likely that we're gonna have to make devastating cuts mid-year if we don't have the cushion to prevent against it. I think calling out the threat of Trump to our budget and our economy is a critical job for the comptroller, and also being a voice for budgeting policies that will protect us from that impact as well.
Harry Siegel
Just a quick follow up: Any tools you would use if there are significant mid-year revisions? Emergency contracts, we've seen recently, not always getting vetted by the comptroller's office. Any specific tools that you'd intend to use as things go forward?
Mark Levine
I do want to say one thing on midyear revisions before talking about the emergency contracts. We have a very bad budgeting practice here of under-accounting for expenses that we all know are coming: under-accounting for how much overtime we're almost certain to use; under-accounting for expenses in special ed, like Carter cases, which some of you might know, maybe, as parents; the CityFHEPS vouchers, the expansion of which I support, but again, we're under-budgeting for it, and you notice what happens every year? We adjust up midyear. Now of course, you have to be able to do that based on changing circumstances, but we without fail adjust up by several billion every year based on these expenses. So an important part of budgeting now in this potentially challenging fiscal environment is to start by being honest, so that we only have to adjust mid-year for changing conditions.
The use of emergency contracts is something that the comptroller's office has to scrutinize. You probably know that every contract has to be reviewed and certified by the comptroller. Actually, I commend Comptroller [Brad] Lander for applying a lot of scrutiny for some of the emergency contracts which the Adams administration has pushed through, including rejecting a very large one for a company called DocGo, which had almost half a billion dollars for management of some of the migrant shelters without a lot of scrutiny and with questions about transparency, about whether the company really had an adequate background to do the work. We have to be careful that emergency contracting is not used to circumvent good government policy, as it appears to have been in the DocGo case. And I would certainly use that power aggressively.
Akash Mehta
On either the state or the city level, if you had put more money into reserves, where would that have come from? What would you have spent less on?
Mark Levine
I think this is a year for modest advances in programming, but probably not a year for dramatic action. And because our tax receipts this year are strong, I think that we can both add to reserves, have modest advancements in key policy priorities like funding for parks, but probably can't do dramatic action. And I think we can do that and add to reserves and be better prepared for the year ahead.
Akash Mehta
Right. But if I'm understanding, you're saying that, for instance, Adams' proposed budget doesn't put enough into reserves and presumably spends too much. So what would you scale back on?
Mark Levine
Well, look, on the topic of how we can cut and save money, there's a lot to say there across agencies and related to some specific agencies. We have a vehicle fleet of 30,000 right now in New York, which we think you can pare back and probably save $50 to $100 million a year. We probably have $17 billion in contracted services that we use for basically IT and admin services — a lot of redundancies there. Save 5% on that, that's $800 million. I think we overuse tax incentives to attract companies in ways we’re not tracking long term and possibly in cases where the companies would've moved here and created jobs anyhow. It’s probably a hundred million a year going into that, the lead program.
And as for specific agencies, it's hard not to look at the Department of Corrections and not feel like there's potential savings there. We had 11,000 detainees a decade ago. We're down to about 7,000, a little over 7,000 now, and the budget and headcount haven't gone down. So that has to be an obvious priority in finding savings. I think if you do all that, you can add to reserves and even do some good things like give good parks funding to recover some of the staffing cuts of recent years.
Getting Around Town
Ben Smith
I'm sorry, just to jump in with it because you brought it up. This is a Nicole Gelinas hobbyhorse and she couldn't be here. But she suggested we ask you, speaking of vehicles, I think you have a car, a couple of drivers and a detail. Do borough presidents and the comptroller actually need that? Is that a good use of city money?
Mark Levine
We don't have a detail. You mean like police detail?
Ben Smith
You have a driver.
Mark Levine
We have civilian drivers, sure. Look, I take the train almost every day. If you ride the A, you'll see me.
Ben Smith
The comptroller, I believe, does have a detail. What is that about? Could you save money on that?
Mark Levine
Sure. I think the idea is that, with $280 billion in pension funds, you may be a target for somebody. Citywide elected officials, at this time, probably prudent to have police protection.
Ben Smith
And do you think that the borough president should have a driver and a car?
Mark Levine
Look, there my preference is always to take the subway. It's more fun and usually faster. But there's times where there's just no way to make the schedule work and in those cases it’s helpful to have that option.
Juan Manuel Benitez
Obviously over the years I've seen you on the A train many times.
Mark Levine
OK, thank you. Thank you. Put that in the transcript.
Juan Manuel Benitez
Is it that you need the drivers because it's easier to now campaign for comptroller if you have the ability to be driven to the other boroughs, beyond Manhattan? As Manhattan borough president, wouldn't the subway be enough?
Mark Levine
Usually, that's why you see me on the A train, but not always. The schedule's tight, have to be on Zoom between meetings. Sometimes there can be no way to pull it off.
Juan Manuel Benitez
But is it because you have to go to the other boroughs, other than Manhattan?
Mark Levine
No, no, no. This has been true for my entire tenure, where I've rarely left the island for the most part.
More City and State Budgets
Akash Mehta
One more overall fiscal question, if more significant federal cuts do come down. You've talked about finding money for savings. You've talked about tapping reserves. In such a scenario, would you support raising revenue? And if so, how? For instance, would you support raising taxes to fill shortfalls?
Mark Levine
Well, first we probably have $2 billion in fines and fees, uncollected. And so we can start by being a little more aggressive on that. As for income tax policy, I certainly believe the most prosperous among us need to pay their fair share. I believe in progressive taxation. My preference is to see that done at the national level so that we're not competing with other states, but in a fiscal crisis I think everything has to be on the table. At the moment, though, my preference would be to see the wealthy have to pay more in the federal tax code, in part because of the mobility of the modern world.
Akash Mehta
The governor just, in this recently-enacted state budget, she enacted what she calls a middle class tax cut although the majority in dollar terms of that money will go to upper middle class and wealthy families. Do you think that that's fiscally prudent at this moment?
Mark Levine
Probably would rather have seen us held off on that, considering the potential storm we’re headed into.
Akash Mehta
And how about the ‘Kathy bucks,’ the $400 checks?
Mark Levine
I don't wanna be too critical of state policy, but in general I think it's a time for prudence considering what's coming.
City Pension Funds, Investing
Myles Miller
The pension fund continues to pay fees to Wall Street. When Brad Lander campaigned, he said he would cut the fees paid to Wall Street asset managers and it's increased by 13% according to the comptroller's office statistics. Do you think you'd curtail that? Are you interested in paying less to Wall Street? It's a huge comptroller's office. Can they, can the office not do its own investments, money management?
Mark Levine
Absolutely interested in curtailing fees. It's not true that we could do it all in house. There's a team called the Bureau of Asset Management in-house, has a staff of a hundred, so there's considerable talent in-house, but the complexity of managing the 10th largest institutional investment fund on earth can't be underestimated.
We own thousands and thousands of assets, of different individual assets, across the world. And we rely on fund management companies to help us. I don't think we could ever completely sever those relationships, but we can certainly drive a hard bargain on fees.
We certainly need to work harder to diversify who is managing our money. We've made a little bit of progress in recent years. I guess about 13% of funds now are managed by what are called emerging managers, MWBEs and other, small emerging managers. We need to do better. I think the target's 20%.
We rely on consultants to help us select and create accountability measures for our fund managers. And, you know, I've talked to many of the MWBEs who feel that the consultants are gatekeepers that make it hard for them to get access. So, probably need to look at the consultants.
Myles Miller
I wonder — it's a question that's asked every time people run for this office who very clearly have spent time in politics. You've obviously spent time, credit union, founding a credit union, that kind of thing, but these are significant assets in their management. If you could talk about what prepares you for this office, to manage the city's pension fund and to be sort-of fighting for the pensioners, paying into the system.
Mark Levine
I do have a technical or quantitative background. I studied physics in college and I'm technically a published physicist. I got one article in which I'm the seventh of seven names on the author list.
Myles Miller
But are you a CFA?
Mark Levine
No, no, no. But I say that to know, I know what the Black-Scholes equation is.
Akash Mehta
What is the Black-Scholes equation?
Mark Levine
It's the way you price derivatives, and I know it because it was a physicist who— do you have a finance background?
Akash Mehta
No, no.
Mark Levine
Yeah, it's the heat flow equation. For years, Wall Street didn't know how to price derivatives, and a physicist came in and said, ‘Oh, that's the heat flow equation.’ So now we have accepted practice there.
I was a TA [teacher’s assistant] in corporate finance, graduate TA in corporate finance in graduate school at Harvard. Went on to charter and found a community development financial institution, and I know what it is to meet payroll every two weeks, to read a balance sheet. Served on the finance committee in the City Council, and currently in my role as Manhattan Borough President, I have a seat on the largest pension fund, NYCERS — well, I guess it's not the largest, teachers is the largest, but one of the largest pension funds, NYCERS. Keisha Sutton-James, my deputy borough president, represents us there quite ably. My PEP appointee is our representative on an additional pension fund known as Board of Ed Retirement Services.
So, I'm not coming to this without experience and feel really confident in my quantitative and financial chops.
Running the Comptroller’s Office, Taking Political Risk
Ben Max
But say a little bit more. This role is by nature, obviously, a political role. It's an elected role. There's a lot of technical aspects of the job. How do you prepare, how do you think about coming in as the politician who heads this, as the elected official, but then you have to hire really well and be on top of all of the technical aspects of this job. How do you prepare for that? How are you preparing for that beyond your duties as borough president? What do you think is key to success in doing that, even as you have to appeal to voters who are mostly not going to engage on all the technical aspects of the job, but that's so key to actually performing well once you get in there?
Mark Levine
First, in terms of making the case to voters, I talk to people who don't know that there's a comptroller in New York City, so it probably should be called the Chief Financial Officer. I've actually seen that, it's a formal proposal, and I generally explain to people that's what it is. It is the second most powerful job in New York City government, and New York City government doesn't work unless you have a strong comptroller's office. It's so much more than just a pension fund. It's our debt management and, of course, audit, oversight, investigations, subpoena power of city agencies. It is approval of contracts, as we spoke about, it's enforcement of wage laws, management of the tort claims process when people sue the city. It’s very critical to the operation of government. And when I have time to explain it to people, I think they understand its importance. But in terms of stepping into the role, this is an office with a staff of 700 and it's very critical that you have someone who can hire good people and manage good people.
And I'm incredibly proud of my record of doing those things, of hiring great people, great leaders, and being a strong manager who sets clear goals for the team, establishes clear metrics, empowers managers to make decisions, and then doesn't micromanage.
Ben Max
Is there a time where someone you've managed has come to you with an idea that you've backed even though you knew politically it was pretty risky for you? This is not always a big issue in the comptroller's office, but always there's politics overlaid with how elected officials do their jobs and make their choices, backing a policy, pursuing an audit, whatever it might be.
Mark Levine
Every day, every day. I supported congestion pricing full-throated from the early days, and that was not politically popular. I feel a little vindicated because it seems to be more and more popular as people experience reduced congestion and see that businesses are thriving. What I've done on housing and land use has often been extremely politically unpopular, both on individual projects and on broader policies. I can give you myriad examples of housing that has gotten built that I took real political hits on.
There again, too, generally, once it's built, the public stops complaining. I got two garages, on the 108th Street between Amsterdam and Columbus, owned by the city, got them knocked down to build 240 units of supportive housing and traditional family housing. We had massive pushback and protests against it.
Got it built. It's there now. It's beautiful. Great for the block. No complaints. I've pushed policy measures like raising the 12 FAR cap, which is almost unheard of for an elected official in Manhattan to speak out on. I didn't hide, it was on social media, making videos about it.
I did it in part because I wanted to change the political narrative around it and make it safer for Council members and Assembly members to step out and do it. And, we got a lot of people on board with that.
Politics of Investment
Liena Zagare
Speaking of politically unpopular things, you support divesting from Tesla. Is that because Musk is now a political pariah or is that genuinely a bad investment? And would you consider investing in other Musk companies?
Mark Levine
OK, a lot to say on the topic. The number one priority in the management of the pension funds is to protect the assets and get good returns for retirees. And ultimately for taxpayers who have to fund the shortfalls if we have returns that don't meet our targets. Again, I wanna say that has to be the top priority for the almost three quarters of a million people who are current and future retirees. I believe that by advancing goals of diversity, bold climate goals, support for LGBTQ rights, support for worker rights and worker safety, we are both advancing good values and advancing good business practices.
There's a lot of evidence to back that up. When you have more diverse boardrooms and more diverse staff and you reach out to a more diverse customer base, you make companies more profitable. And, in fact, I wanna go big on this. I wanna link up with blue city and blue state pension funds to create a counterbalance against the Trump agenda. Collectively we have $3 trillion in assets — double what the red city and red states have. So, again, I think that this is about long-term value for the funds.
Ben Smith
I mean, there is a reality in the markets in the last, I don't know, couple years that you had this long period where, where quote-unquote ESG stocks, Tesla, Netflix, were great, but now, like this year, the best performers are tobacco and Dollar General. Arms manufacturers are doing great. Oil companies are doing great. Do you think that city retirees should, for sort-of ethical reasons, be shut out from those returns?
Mark Levine
I think that there are both ethical and financial reasons to shift our investments to things like green technology–
Ben Smith
But even if it makes retirees poor–
Mark Levine
Well, I believe that they are longer-term better investments. I truly believe that, or I wouldn't–
Ben Smith
Sure, but, you are one of many people trying to guess the future of the markets and most of them, many professionals. But the reality right now, in the last couple of years, has not been that.
Mark Levine
You can't over-read one year or two years. You gotta look long term. And, I firmly believe that it's both morally and fiscally wise to shift out of fossil fuel companies into green technology. So, I think that is the more sophisticated long-term view.
Juan Manuel Benitez:
Do you follow that philosophy when you manage your own private investments?
Mark Levine
I'm mostly in index funds, honestly, fairly passive investments, and don't have as much as I would like, but try and be responsible, yes.
Juan Manuel Benitez
So have you tried to take those [‘responsible’] funds?
Mark Levine
Probably not as much as I should.
Myles Miller
Are you in deferred compensation?
Mark Levine
Well, I have a pension.
Myles Miller
Yeah, but did you join through NYCERS, and all that kind of stuff?
Mark Levine
Yes. Tier 6, unfortunately.
Political Considerations
Juan Manuel Benitez
You've been one of those politicians who's waited his turn when it came to political office. Your first campaign or sort of campaign was for the state senate, because Adriano Espaillat was running for Congress. And you were sort of like the placeholder in that occasion. And then, you waited and you ran for the City Council, and the current comptroller and the last comptrollers, all of them, Brad Lander, Scott Stringer, John Liu, they all wanted to run for mayor and they did. Scott Stringer is trying again, and Brad Lander is doing it right now. And you thought about running for mayor in this cycle. Why did you switch from mayor to comptroller? Is it again that you're waiting your turn?
Mark Levine
Well, a little bit of a clarification on history there. In 2010, I was a Democratic district leader, fairly newly elected. And I ran against the sitting Assembly member for State Senate. I didn't wait my turn. Tough race, and didn't win. I'm probably better off not having gone to Albany, honestly, in retrospect. But, I'm not afraid of a tough race. I think I proved it in 2010. I could have run for mayor this year but, honestly, comptroller is a dream job for me because of my background, because of my passion for questions of budget and finance. And I would be thrilled to do it for four years and if the voters allowed me, eight years. Not looking to use it as a springboard.
More Investment Strategy
Akash Mehta
You mentioned a moment ago, you mentioned passive investment. You may have seen the profile of the Nevada pension fund manager, who sort of takes it easy at work, doesn't have any colleagues. It's basically just one guy, invests in essentially equivalents to low cost index funds and has eaten the lunch of almost every other major pension fund, including New York's — lower fees and higher returns. This is probably not advice that you're gonna get from well-paid investment bankers whose profession depends on active management, but how do you think about active versus passive management for New York City pension funds?
Mark Levine
Well, I'm gonna look into the Nevada case. I'd like to know what their total assets are.
Akash Mehta
Much smaller, yes.
Mark Levine
Right? And, when your assets are $280 billion, it's much tougher because you move markets when you move money and it becomes much more complicated. The imperative to diversify is huge across every asset class we have, including private equity, including international investments, including real estate. So it's not quite as simple as just putting it in an index fund. But I agree with your underlying point that, not sure that active management over time has a better track record than index funds, that you saw it in my personal investment philosophy. So I'll take that skeptical view into the comptroller’s office.
Myles Miller
Alternative investment vehicles, whether it be real estate, whether it be private equity, obviously the higher fees, sometimes they relate to higher returns, sometimes they don't. What’s your feeling on alternative asset classes?
Mark Levine
What's my feeling on alternative asset classes?
Myles Miller
Investing in real estate and investing in private equity as part of the pension fund.
Mark Levine
You need to have a diversified portfolio. So that includes buying publicly-traded stocks. It includes investment in private companies.
It includes real assets. It includes investments in global markets, including emerging markets, including debt and equity abroad and some, obviously, investment in debt and fixed income. That's how you, how we are insulated from the turmoil in any one asset class.
Myles Miller
But you wouldn't do a thing where you say we're not investing in real estate.
We're, you know, not looking at private equity because of the things they've done in this space. In some of the same way that, divesting from fossil fuel companies, would you ever say, ‘Oh, we're not gonna invest in real estate for this political reason’ kind of thing?
Mark Levine
No, I think we wanna own real estate because it can be a solid investment. You know, it irks me that when you go into the office of the Teacher's Retirement Service, our big $100 billion-plus fund, there's a sign that says this building's owned by the Alabama teachers’ retirement fund.
Myles Miller
You go to Washington, DC, every building's owned by a teacher's retirement fund or a Canadian retirement fund.
Mark Levine
And I think we've been a little, I think we're a little behind, probably, on real estate, owning real estate assets. But, no, I wouldn't eliminate ownership of private companies as a blanket policy.
Akash Mehta
Brad Lander successfully pushed to increase the basket clause to increase the amount that you can invest in alternative–
Mark Levine
Yeah. I agree with that.
Akash Mehta
You agree with that push to increase?
Mark Levine
Yeah. Well, particularly because I want to push for more investment in affordable housing and that would facilitate it.
Akash Mehta
You have a proposal to take affordable housing out of that basket. But how about companies like Brookfield and the Carlyle Group and Blackstone, sort of private equity real estate, housing activists have argued that that business model, including in rent stabilized housing in New York City, is predicated on displacing tenants.
Mark Levine
I want to look closely at that and analyze just how profitable they are for retirees and if there is a deleterious impact on tenants. So, don't think I'm quite ready to give a blanket answer on that one yet.
Housing and Zoning
Ben Smith
Can I ask you just a big picture housing question. You came up in amid these sort of fights over affordable housing that were often kind of street by street, block by block, garage by garage.
Mark Levine
Yeah.
Ben Smith
There is now, I think for the first time in my career, within the Democratic Party, a big argument about, well maybe the problem is actually blanket regulations. This abundance agenda stuff: we should broadly deregulate, let people build wherever they want, as tall as they want. What is your view on this kind of YIMBY-NIMBY battle going on inside the party and in the world you're in?
Mark Levine
We have failed in New York City to build the housing that we need. We're probably short half a million units. And we don't need a degree in economics to understand what that does to rents. We have bidding wars on rental apartments in New York, which is not common in New York City history. We're famous for bidding wars on co-ops and condos. But it's pretty remarkable to see that an apartment can be listed for $5,000 and ends up renting for $5,500 because someone comes in and says I'll pay more than the asking rent. And you know who wins and who loses in those fights. People with the most money win and working class people, it's not even just people making minimum wage, it’s nurses and doctors and bus drivers who can get priced out.
We need zoning codes. I'm not calling for total anarchy in housing development. But we have simply made it too hard to build. And sometimes it's the zoning code, but there's other barriers as well. The accumulation of 30 years, maybe more — 50 years of good intentions in policy. We had a reaction to Robert Moses so we put in greater protections for community stakeholders. Good idea for sure. We're worried about environmental abuse. We put in more protections for environmental impact. We had the horror of Penn Station being demolished. We put in more protections for historic preservation. We've put in myriad forms of design criteria. Every one of them were good-intentioned. Many protections to prevent against fraud and corruption.
But what it adds up to is an average cost for building a bathroom in a New York City park of over $5 million. Or, related to your previous question, the cost now for doing an affordable unit can hit three quarters of a million dollars in some projects, which is just insane.
Ben Smith
How do you think about the role of market-rate housing in that? Do you think that part of the supply issue is just getting market-rate housing built, or should it all be affordable?
Mark Levine
Ben, when I moved to New York City, in 1991, my first apart–
Ben Smith
Good timing.
Mark Levine
Yeah, it was good timing, came here. What happened in 1991?
Ben Smith
I don't know. Crime started going down. Rents, housing prices were still low.
Mark Levine
Yeah…‘92 was the peak year of murder, unfortunately. And I was a teacher in the South Bronx in those years, so I’ve got stories.
Anyway, my first solo apartment was not ‘till 1992. I rented a studio on Clinton Avenue and DeKalb in your borough [Brooklyn]. It was definitely a pre-gentrified era, I'll say that. Lovely apartment, high ceilings, lots of light, big windows, 580 a month.
Myles Miller
Eat-in kitchen?
Mark Levine
Well, yeah, but I was a kid. I was making $26,000 a year as a teacher. I didn't have to enter in a lottery, an affordable housing lottery to get that apartment. I was able to, I guess at the time you opened the newspaper and found a listing, because there was enough supply. And we need more housing of all types. We certainly need more income-targeted affordable housing, desperately, but we need more housing overall because when we do that it lowers the cost for everybody.
Ben Max
You said almost as an aside, sort-of matter-of-fact, ‘of course we need zoning.’ Why? Maybe there's some zoning code still that has major pieces of what can be built where across the city, but why not a more radical re-envisioning at least of the zoning code? ‘City of Yes for Housing Opportunity’ took some significant steps. Obviously you supported that, but other voices out there, your borough president counterpart in Brooklyn, saying this is not bold, what qualifies right now as bold on housing is just nowhere near what New York City needs. What's sort-of the radical way to actually make up that 500,000-unit gap? Because right now it's a lot of pro-housing voices among Democrats, as Ben was getting at, but it's also still a lot of piece by piece advancements that don't seem like they're gonna make up the gap.
Mark Levine:
We didn't have zoning in New York City, I think what, until 1916. And you can walk around Wall Street and see very tall buildings with very little distance between windows, and I don't think anyone would defend that as good urban planning today. And it's important that we decide what neighborhoods should be for manufacturing versus commercial versus housing versus mixed use, et cetera.
So I still think there's a role for zoning, but we're still largely living off the 1961 zoning replan, which ‘City of Yes’ was significant for the first major update on that. But [from] a time when the car was king, when we thought the city was gonna empty out, when we didn't think we had a housing shortage because we thought we would have a surplus of housing 'cause everyone was leaving. And we’re making some efforts to undo that. We got the 12 FAR cap lifted, which was a relic of that mindset in 1961. We fixed some things in ‘City of Yes,’ like barriers to conversion from commercial to residential. Again, it was 1961. No one thought you would ever want to convert from commercial to residential.
They were worried about the opposite. But, a single neighborhood can produce 10,000 units, right? We are potentially gonna gain that in the Midtown South rezoning, Garment District and a few adjacent areas. It's only 42 blocks. We can get 10,000 units there and there are neighborhoods all over the city like that, that are crying out.
We're doing 8,000 units in Gowanus, I think. And so I think that with bold neighborhood by neighborhood plans, ideally paired with expansion of mass transit — there's a proposal to extend the #1 train to the Brooklyn waterfront and build housing around that so that you're creating a whole new neighborhood. I think you can get to 500,000 without totally abandoning the concept of zoning.
Construction Costs
Liena Zagare
I have a question from Nicole [Gelinas], who's not here, but you have talked about New York's non-competitive construction costs. And one aspect is the prevailing wages combined with work rules that make our labor force less productive.
And you know, right now prevailing wage requires compensation of nearly a hundred dollars an hour, including benefits, for construction site traffic flaggers. Do you think we need some reform of work rules and or prevailing wage? And if so, what kind?
Mark Levine
She's right. I'm concerned about construction costs, not just for park bathrooms, but for subway stations.
The average cost right now to do an accessibility upgrade for a station, you know, elevators, et cetera, is 70 to a hundred million [dollars] from one station. Not to build it new. That's just to put in a couple elevators. But it's interesting to compare to our peer cities, Paris, London, they're just as old as New York—
Ben Smith
Slightly older.
Mark Levine
Yeah, well, older. Yes, older. They have just as much tangled underground infrastructure, sewers from the Victorian era, et cetera, and they have as strong or stronger labor union protections, right? So there's more going on here. And I talked about a few of the accumulated, well-intentioned policies in place. Environmental review. You can kill a project in New York or add a lot of cost and time to a project in New York that is clearly good environmentally by suing based on environmental law. That's how they're trying to kill congestion pricing. You can kill a hundred units of housing on top of a subway. Otherwise those units would be dispersed in the suburbs where people have to drive in. Would not be good.
Ben Max
Come back; come back to the work rules, though.
Mark Levine
I think that we can produce housing without sacrificing good-paying jobs to workers’ safety specifically.
Ben Smith
The city should require that the traffic flagger on a construction site make a hundred dollars an hour?
Mark Levine
I don't think the city specifically requires that, but maybe I'm wrong about that.
Harry Siegel
Mr. Borough President, you’re running for comptroller, right?
Mark Levine
Yeah.
Harry Siegel
So is there anything you could be doing as comptroller that relates to these issues? 'Cause I think we're having a broad conversation, and I’m interested—
Mark Levine
Well, the comptroller's responsible for wage enforcement and the comptroller's responsible for, specifically, enforcing prevailing wage. But that's mostly about looking for employers who are cheating or not paying the wages that workers owe. The comptroller, of course, has overview of contracting and procurement, and the comptroller has a bully pulpit to be a voice for reining in the cost of infrastructure.
MWBE Contracting, Contract Oversight, Government Integrity and Modernization
Harry Siegel
If I can shift for one second. I have two quick questions about MWBEs. First off, is there anything the comptroller can do to expand that universe? To improve how it works and to Trump-proof it, as a lot of his executive orders seem to be aimed at programs that he sees as illegally favoring different groups.
Mark Levine
I talked about the comptroller starting with their own house and trying to ensure that the fund managers represent the diversity of, better represent the diversity of the city. But we have $40 billion a year in contracts in New York City government. It's an astounding amount. Currently, 18% of those contracts are going to MWBEs, but if you look at a dollar-for-dollar basis, it's not even 6% because some of the MWBE contracts tend to be a little bit smaller. So we're nowhere near where we need to be. You know, we'll give credit to the current mayor for moving the needle some on that. Look, the comptroller can bring more accountability to this, rating agencies, agency by agency. I would certainly do that to shine a light on this, have more transparency and to be a voice for, even more so in the Trump era.
Harry Siegel
And just one more question there. These are smaller contracts. A lot of the legal trouble the mayor, Eric Adams, was in, and various prosecutions and guilty pleas have involved MWBEs. Is there a need for more oversight there, to make sure that this is honest and transparent. And is that something the current comptroller is doing that you would do more of? Do you think things are basically okay with that or what's up?
Mark Levine
It’s a well-intentioned policy to increase the threshold by which you can have a streamlined bidding process, and there has been some abuse there. So I think there's gotta be more comptroller scrutiny to those kind of small contracts.
Myles Miller
I wonder — yes, there's been fraud there, but when you think of everything outside of that, they're also just businesses that are owned by non-men and women of color, and that kind of thing, so just broadly, when you look at some of the issues that you've seen the corruption cases in, whether it be in construction, whether it be in the bid process, some of the stuff that DOI has taken down, as it relates to sort of bid-rigging and that kind of thing, where do you see the comptroller's office landing on that? I guess there's a lot of audit, there's subpoena power, but where should the comptroller's office stand as it relates to making sure that it's a bulwark against that sort of municipal corruption and can the comptroller's office actually find that kind of stuff? A lot of times it's after the fact, it's an audit. Is there, should there be some active way for the comptroller's office to find these kinds of problems?
Mark Levine
This may have been why the comptroller's office was created. I guess I should look back to the history, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was to root out corruption. Certainly this has to be one of the biggest mandates, and sadly, in 2025, this is still a threat. Seeing it play out in the headlines, unfortunately, so you have to be unafraid to use audit and oversight powers. And good comptrollers have. You know, John Liu uncovered the CityTime scandal, which was I think a $400 million contract. Jay Golden famously uncovered the Parking Violations Bureau scandal. These are some of the most important successes in the comptroller’s office to root out corruption. You ask a really interesting point about, couldn't we do this before? Catch it in real time. And I think technology may offer an opportunity here by perhaps using AI tools to evaluate real-time financial performance. We could flag signs of impropriety and have investigators look at that. So I am thinking about ways to modernize the investigation process to uncover problems before they fester out of control.
Myles Miller
Checkbook NYC is one of those things where some of these people who are involved in some of these scandals involving the mayor will clearly show up in Checkbook NYC.
You think that in terms of using technology, ways to use AI or that kind of thing, if this name is associated with this politician, then they are immediately sort of, you know, X’ed out. Why do you think the comptroller's office hasn't gotten to that kind of innovation?
Mark Levine
Well, without knowing exactly the decision making at the current comptroller’s office, we have a city government that is stuck in the 1990s across every agency.
Myles Miller
Not as bad as FAA.
Mark Levine
Yeah. What are they, the 1950s maybe? But we still have fax machines in use in New York City government. That's not hyperbole. And we have not adapted to the mobile era. We certainly haven't adapted to any of the advances in machine learning. And I look across city government and I just see failure after failure after failure. That could be better addressed by modernizing.
I've talked a lot about affordable housing, a passion of mine. If you've got a property ready and the zoning's all good and you got the developer and even have the financing, which is the hardest part, you gotta add 12 to 18 months to the approval, to the timeline, to build the housing, to wait for approval from HPD while they do the term sheets and the loan documents.
There's no excuse for that. That's a family who's in a homeless shelter for 12 to 18 months longer. That's crying out for technology to speed up the process. These are highly templated review processes. We probably have a quarter of a million people in New York City who qualify for food stamps and don't currently receive them.
What percent of those households do you think one member has a smartphone? I'm gonna say 99% in 2025. So what if instead of having to go to a PDF and have dropdown menus, you could just talk to your smartphone, in plain English or plain any language to enroll in food stamps that are first and foremost great for the family but also mean money spent in local supermarkets, in delis, et cetera?
I can tell a similar story in every agency of government, where there's huge opportunity to deliver more for New Yorkers and to get better value for taxpayers if we can embrace technology. And I have a background on this.
Auditing The Department of Education, Audit Impact
Liena Zagare
I had a couple of audit questions. And one is about the Department of Education, which, you know, has the biggest budget item.
Mark Levine
Yep.
Liena Zagare
What kind of audits would you do at the Department of Education? What do you think has not been done? And I'll follow up on that.
Mark Levine
Special ed process. The process for getting a child evaluated. Getting them supplemental services if needed, and if need to getting them private school education, if the schools can't meet it, it is utterly broken, and in a shocking number of shockingly high number of cases requires families to hire a lawyer and sue to get good services, which is hard even for a middle class family. But for a family struggling to make ends meet can be nearly impossible.
And we end up probably paying out much more money in fighting those lawsuits than we would if we just had better solutions, perhaps in-house to DOE. So I wanna go in very, very deep in every step of that process, from getting people evaluated, getting them IEPs, getting them services in-house. I would determine whether they need special ed services and if they do, getting them their payment expeditiously.
Liena Zagare
Any others?
Mark Levine
In DOE?
Liena Zagare
Yeah.
Mark Levine
We spend an inordinate amount of money in things that are not in the classroom. And I want to tilt DOE spending to direct classroom impact. Shocking amount spent in the central bureaucracy, especially through outside consultants. And I would want to go in deep there and see where that money is going, and could we divert it to more pressing needs in school buildings?
Ben Max
That's something that David Banks and Eric Adams came into office talking about, that very thing — that not enough of the money is going into the classroom. So much is getting sucked up at DOE central. In terms of the actual percentage of the DOE budget, I don't know that it's actually that high of a percentage, but why did they not actually get anywhere? David Banks gave an opening speech when he became chancellor, like, ‘I'm coming for you, DOE bureaucracy.’ Do you have a sense of what happened there? Why they failed?
Mark Levine
I don’t, but I'm gonna talk to him [David Banks] about it, and see if I can find out.
Liena Zagare
Comptrollers do a lot of worthy audits. How would you actually have those audits have real world consequences, especially if you've got a dismissive mayor?
Mark Levine
First of all, I think it's not enough to point out problems. I think a good comptroller also points out the solutions. And I think if you can make a compelling case that something's broken and you can lay out a way to fix it, that's gonna be much more impactful. In general, you need a comptroller who is totally independent of the mayor, who is unafraid to point out failings and to push to achieve fixes and willing to organize.
Ben Smith
Don’t you think Mayor Cuomo is gonna be challenging to work with in this regard?
Mark Levine
The election has not occurred yet. So, I'm not predicting the outcome.
Ben Smith
But if he's elected, don't you think he's gonna be a nightmare for the comptroller to work with?
Mark Levine
I'm not gonna make any predictions on that. I know that I will be totally –
Ben Max
He was governor for 10 and a half years. He did battle with the state comptroller. He did battle with the attorney general.
Ben Smith
He's a very independent-minded guy.
Mark Levine
OK, look, the city comptroller's office has its powers defined in the charter, and the mayor can't take them away, and a good comptroller will use them effectively, no matter who the mayor is, to support the mayor or push back. That will be my—
Ben Smith
Sorry, I didn't mean to derail.
Mark Levine
It's all good. All good.
Ben Max
Wait, come back for a second. That's what audits do now, right? They have recommendations. To Liena's point, most of the time, well, I shouldn't say most, but there are times agencies take those recommendations and accept them, right? There's a lot of times where the mayor brushes it off, as you said. Is there any way you can do things differently to leverage the comptroller's office to actually get more of the audit recommendations taken up by agencies?
Mark Levine
I think a little public organizing campaign to mobilize allies for top priorities, for sure. If you're pointing out failures in approval of affordable housing, you're gonna have to mobilize people who care about that issue. And if you look at my biggest successes in government, they have not been cases where I’ve had absolute power. I was a member of the city council, one of 51 votes, and I got right-to-counsel for tenants in housing court facing eviction passed. Because I spent three years leading an organizing effort that got faith leaders and the mainstream bar associations and leaders at all levels of government, and we won and I’ll organize to win for similar policy priorities as comptroller.
Political Coalitions
Juan Manuel Benitez
Talking about coalitions and organization, you came out of, it's fair to say that you were part of the Adriano Espaillat coalition in Upper Manhattan. And now you got the endorsement of Congressman Espaillat and also former Congressman Charlie Rangel. They don't like each other. Those two factions have been fighting for more than a decade uptown. How is it that you got both groups together to endorse your campaign?
Mark Levine
First of all, I think Congressman Rangel and Congressman Espaillat get along better than you might think. You can ask them about it. I have done my best to be a good partner for everybody, and to be fair and to be extremely attentive to every neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan. And to be no less attentive to Harlem than I am to Washington Heights or Inwood or any other neighborhood. I think people are judging me on the merits and really grateful to have an incredibly diverse coalition as I'm going citywide now.
Risk Aversion in Government, Modernization, AI, and Cryptocurrency
Akash Mehta
When you were talking about fax machines and we were asking you about things like audit powers and oversight powers, when you talk to civil servants about why they use the fax machines or other sort of infuriatingly antiquated systems and procedures and inefficiency, one thing you'll often hear is that there is a culture of incredible risk aversion in all levels of government. And one huge reason for that is the oversight power of comptrollers and independent auditors and oversight committees and accountability and investigative journalists that ends up leading to a sort of rigid culture of box checking where you don't want to have, where you can't take risks, you can't innovate because if you get it wrong, and part of innovation is about the risk of getting something wrong, you'll be called out for it. How do you think about that tradeoff as the primary oversight official in New York?
Mark Levine
I think you're right. There is too much risk aversion in government, but we are entering into a period of unprecedented technological advance. Some people say we'll see a century of advancement in the next decade or maybe in the next half of a decade, so the city can't afford to sit this out. We have got to grapple with what's coming and harness the upside and mitigate the downside. And I think that's true in every aspect of city government, from education to employment training to the way we administer elections.
I'm actually very worried that New York City is sleepwalking into the storm. And I put out a policy, at this point, I mean like over a year and a half ago, sort of a call to action for New York City to begin to grapple with this and to begin to look at ways to innovate and change how we do business. I think the comptroller’s office is a really powerful platform to push for this, in part because if the person who's holding you accountable, and maybe you're being audited by, is pushing city government to modernize, maybe that'll change the calculus. I'm certainly gonna try. I think this is critical.
Ben Smith
One of the things that people think AI is gonna do is eliminate jobs and obviously the single biggest cost to New York City in the budget is labor. Do you anticipate it or do you think it could dramatically reduce the size of the New York City workforce over time?
Mark Levine
I would want labor to be a partner in this innovation. And when I talk to municipal workers, I say, what, what would make your job easier? What would make you more effective? And I think that the goal would be to get more value out of city services, and I wouldn't want workers to feel punished by innovation. I would want them to feel empowered and to ultimately be able to deliver good services. I can give you so many examples. The way we dispatch ambulances, we have not done big-data analysis on conditions like time of day, the weather, the season, other factors.
Myles Miller
There is some of that going on at [NYU] Tandon with the AI pilot.
Mark Levine
So I talked to the fire commissioner about it and he said that he thinks that—
Myles Miller
Well, it’s because it was under Laura Kavanaugh. So that's the reason why it'd be changed. And I'll give my disclaimer that I spent time there under a different fire commissioner, but there is significant work being done with NYU Tandon on specifically all of that kind of stuff.
Mark Levine
OK, good. Well, happy to hear that.
Ben Smith
On a different tech issue, you were an early crypto adopter and in 2015 or at least I saw an article on CoinDesk, which is now no longer half-online, where you were talking about being able to use Bitcoin as a legal tender, for it to pay for certain services in New York.
I'm curious whether you still think that's a good idea, and then on the investment side whether you think the city should hold Bitcoin, should hold other cryptocurrencies, should invest in crypto ETFs?
Mark Levine
At the time it was an emerging industry and I want New York City always to be on the cutting edge, and I felt it was a way for us to show we were willing to innovate. So, I’m more concerned about it today.
Ben Smith
Did you own some crypto back then?
Mark Levine
No. No, no.
Myles Miller
Do you wanna own any now?
Mark Levine
I might have a hundred dollars in Bitcoin or something like that, but I've become more concerned about the vulnerability of consumers who are essentially investing in speculative assets, and alarmed at the rise of meme coins. And I think what Trump is doing right now, with the Trump-branded crypto assets, is blatant corruption.
Ben Smith
So you're not gonna consider a Levine coin?
Mark Levine
[Laughter] Well, would you buy some of it, Ben? If so, maybe.
Ben Smith
Well, if I could get in early and then we can sell it to these guys.
Mark Levine
I'll give you the insider price.
Ben Smith
But would you have the pension funds either buy directly or indirectly invest in crypto?
Mark Levine
No, I would not.
More on Political Coalitions, Politics of the Comptroller Race
Ben Max
Can we come back to Juan Manuel’s question to ask you a little more about the politics of your race. At the same time, you don't have the backing of the Manhattan Democratic Party Chair Keith Wright, who's supporting one of your opponents, Justin Brannan, and a number of other uptown officials.
Maybe you want to add onto your answer about why you weren't able to sort of pull together that full Manhattan coalition, and then extend that into your theory of your path to victory in this race. You obviously come with a very strong Manhattan base as the borough president that could get you a long way toward victory, but it's a citywide race.
So if you could sort of merge those two questions into the politics of your comptroller race; your top competitor is City Council Member Justin Brannan, but there's others in the race as well.
Mark Levine
I feel really good about where we are in the race. I take nothing for granted, you gotta fight till the last vote is counted. We start with a really strong base in Manhattan, which is something like close to 30% of the vote in the Democratic primary. And I think we've gotten probably upwards of 90% of endorsements in Manhattan. Everything from elected officials to Democratic clubs, to district leaders, and including leaders in Harlem from Al Taylor and the Tioga Democratic Club, Inez Dickens and the MLK Democratic Club, Eddie Gibbs, former Congressman Rangel, former Governor Paterson — many, many other leaders in Harlem. I take nothing for granted but I was proud to win Harlem in the borough president's race in 2021 and we're gonna fight really hard to win this time. I have the advantage of having served, representing Harlem, for the past four years.
But also, Ben, we're doing great in the other boroughs as well. Brooklyn would be the borough where I have the second most endorsements, too many to mention but the Brooklyn borough president, many Assembly members, Council members, Democratic clubs.
As Juan Manuel knows, I have the advantage of having been on Spanish-language TV for much of the last 15 years. And, you know, I go into a barber shop in Corona, Queens, and they say, I like what you're doing on affordable housing. And I say, how do you know this, and they say “lo vi en las noticias” [I saw it in the news]. And, it's sort of a parallel ecosystem of media that I'm not sure the mainstream political culture really appreciates how important it is and how powerful it is, but for me it's a game-changer in this race. Anyway, I can tell a similar story of dominating endorsements in Queens, dominating endorsements in the Bronx. We're so proud of our labor coalition, the largest public sector union, DC 37, the largest private sector union, 1199, many others.
And fundraising isn't everything, but it helps and we're pretty far ahead on fundraising and it allowed us to go up early on TV. We were out with our first ad this week, debuted in the Knicks game, and it's a pretty fun ad if you saw it.
Ben Smith
Yeah. You're a language guy.
Mark Levine
That's my thing.
Spanish Fluency, Demographic Shifts, Bilingual Education, Personal Story
Ben Smith
You’re fluent in Spanish, you’ve been speaking to Spanish-speaking New Yorkers for a long time. I'm forgetting the number, but a very high percentage of kids in New York schools are Latino now. How do you see New York changing as it just becomes a much more Latino city, broadly, I think that's the demographic trend.
Mark Levine
Look, I think that this wave of arrivals is going to be great for New York City, just as every other wave of arrivals has been since probably your grandparents and my grandparents arrived here. I talk to migrant families all the time. I have the advantage of speaking Spanish and not insignificant number of them speak French, because of French West African, and I speak enough to at least have a conversation. In almost every case, the first question they ask me is, how can I work? And these are families who walked across the continent who are incredibly motivated, who by definition are capable if you walked across the continent, and will literally tell me, I want to pay rent and pay taxes. And we need that energy and we need that economic vitality.
And honestly, our schools have also benefited from an enrollment boost. We've had steadily declining enrollment for the past five or six years. And that's devastating for a school system. Look at Chicago that I think is now like 22 years in a row of declining enrollment and look at all the pain and hardship that's brought. And we stabilized in the last year or two. I don't minimize the challenge that absorbing tens of thousands of kids who have English language-learning challenges, and also have gone through trauma in their lives. And so supporting them socially and emotionally and supporting them in their language transition...
Ben Smith
There's been a fair amount of criticism or debate over bilingual education. I noticed that you talk about dual language.
Mark Levine
Yes.
Ben Smith
Is there a difference and how…is that to embrace some of the criticism that bilingual doesn't ever wind up teaching them English?
Mark Levine
I mean at this point, bilingual education is a term that's probably been stretched beyond meaning. But I really believe in the dual language model, which draws together kids who are native speakers in a non-English language and native speaker kids who are native speakers in English and would then spend half the day learning in each other's languages.
So it could be Spanish and English or Mandarin and English or, we have dozens of different programs around the city, and it's a gift to kids on both sides, who become comfortable from a young age speaking both languages. It's a phenomenally successful model. We have a Russian-language dual language school, my old council district, at PS 145 on 105th St. And not all the kids are from Russian families necessarily. Some are from Latino families. And what a gift to those kids. But only maybe 2% of elementary school kids are in dual language programs. I'd love to see that ramped up with a little more support from Tweed.
I think it's a beautiful model. For me, it's changed my life. I mean, I would not be an elected official if I didn't speak Spanish, and running Uptown. And it's a way to connect to people in this diverse city. And now that I'm going five boroughs, it's been so beautiful to be in Bangladeshi communities and Sri Lanka communities and Haitian communities.
Ben Smith
Do you have any language learning tips?
Mark Levine
Oh, do I have any language learning tips? Yeah. Don't be scared to sound like an idiot because there's no avoiding that in the early days, but you'll get beyond that, and people will be so grateful that you tried.
Juan Manuel Benitez
So for over an hour, we've been talking about policy, politics, finance, economics, housing.
You're running for the greyest citywide office out there. Meaning that people don't really know what a comptroller does, and it's like an obscure office. A lot of voters are going to decide whom to vote for depending on whether they like the candidate or not. So for the greyest office out there, can you give us some color? What do you want voters to know about Mark Levine? Not the politician, but the person.
Mark Levine
Oh, wow. Well, I put something of that in my first ad, my language ability is something that so much defines who I am and defines how I interact with New Yorkers of all backgrounds.
I have a beautiful family. Very proud. My wife and I have two incredible boys. I think you might've met them or you know about them, but, we have our son Daniel, who's a nursing student, a proud out queer young man who's at Temple University, gonna be the best employed of all of us.
Our older son, Alejandro, just became a New York State certified EMT. So I'm just really proud of these two guys. I've talked about some of my other defining qualities in this interview so far. I think I've referenced two or three times having studied physics, which might surprise you 'cause it was a long time ago.
I mean, I was Haverford College class of ‘91. But it so influences how I do my job now, even all these years later. There's an approach to solving problems in physics. A physics teacher told me that if you attack a problem from enough different angles, eventually it gives up its secret.And I've taken that to heart. Tough problems don't yield the answer right away. And sometimes the answer doesn't pop into your mind until you're in the shower one day or trying to fall asleep at night. But I believe if you attack a public policy problem from enough different angles, it will yield its secret.
It definitely defines how I look at the world, and I think it's more relevant than ever as we enter this time of rapid technological change to have some sense of how these strange new systems coming into existence, that are difficult even for engineers to understand. I think to have some sense of how linear algebra works, it's probably pretty helpful to understand a neural network. So, anyway, these are all qualities which I hope will serve me well if I'm lucky enough to be the next comptroller.
Myles Miller
We’ve got three tabloid guys here, and none of us asked the tabloid question, which is like, why are you better than Justin Brannan to run this office? You know, you guys both served in City Council, he's obviously running the budget…
Mark Levine
Well, you're not gonna get any negative attacks from me against any of my opponents. I’ll say a couple things. One, my career has been defined by identifying really big problems and organizing to implement solutions. I was a teacher in the South Bronx. There I was very close to my kids and their families. Very few of them had any connection to the formal financial system. No banks, no credit cards. For them, banking was check-cashing stores, loan sharks, pawn shops–
Myles Miller
Municipal credit union a little bit.
Mark Levine
Not among the students in my families, honestly, in the South Bronx, in the 1990s. Very, very, very few. I love municipal credit unions. I love credit unions in general. I formed a credit union in Washington Heights to fill that gap that has made a hundred million dollars of small loans uptown to help people get access to loans for starting a business, buying a home computer — a 98% repayment rate. I identified a big problem, I organized to solve it. I got to the City Council in 2014 at a time when there were 25,000 evictions a year in New York City, and I led a campaign to pass right to counsel for tenants in housing court that required a three-year battle against the full force of the landlord lobby and we won.
Myles Miller
So is your pitch that you're just better positioned versus this guy's just not?
Mark Levine
I'm not gonna speak negatively about any of my opponents. I'm very proud of my record in taking on tough fights and winning those tough fights, including politically unpopular fights. In Covid, standing up for good public health and still earning the ire of the national right; as borough president, fighting to build housing, whether or not that has been popular; standing up for policies like congestion pricing, which have not been popular, now trending popular, because I was convinced that they were needed to solve big problems for the city. That's defined how I've led in government. It will define how I am, and I'd put that record up against anybody.
Ben Smith
Well, thank you, Mark.
Mark Levine
Thank you, guys.