Whitney Tilson Interview Transcript

A transcript of The New York Editorial Board's interview with mayoral candidate Whitney Tilson.

Whitney Tilson, an investor and a candidate in the June 2025 Democratic primary for Mayor, spoke with The New York Editorial Board on the morning of March 6, 2025. (photo by Liena Zagare)

Participating journalists: Nicole Gelinas, Josh Greenman, Christina Greer, Akash Mehta, Myles Miller, Harry Siegel, Ben Smith, Liena Zagare.

Full Transcript

Policing and Public Safety

Myles Miller
I spent some time around the NYPD. When you say you want to “make crime illegal again,” explain what that means. Until COVID hit, crime was going down under Bill de Blasio. So how do you want to use the NYPD more proactively?

Whitney Tilson
I actually don’t think it starts with the NYPD. It starts with legislation. Let me step back. When I say making crime illegal again, I mean that eight pieces of legislation passed, roughly 2019 to 2020, that basically went way too far in decriminalizing almost all but the serious crimes. And not surprisingly, we’ve seen a lot more of it, and that’s led to an increase in more serious crimes. So I’ve tracked the data. Since right before the pandemic, from 2019 through 2024, seven major felonies are up, adjusted for the rate, adjusted for an 8% decline in population, are up an average of 52%. Particularly, felony assaults are at a 25-year high. Felony assaults on the subway are up 150%. And it is not just the most serious crimes. Petit larceny, same story. So it’s ironic, because I was co-chair of Central Synagogue’s criminal justice reform initiative, and fought for things like bail reform. But when Democrats flipped the State Senate, we became a one-party state, and there was no pushback basically, and so far-left criminal-justice ideas that went too far, in my opinion, is what passed. So I think bail reform is a perfect example. We’re the only state to this day that doesn’t allow judges to consider dangerousness pre-trial. We were always fighting, at least I was always fighting, to greatly reduce or eliminate an unfair and inequitable bail system. But you had to give judges dangerousness, was the trade-off—

Josh Greenman
You’re running for mayor, not for state office. So you know, Mayor Adams wants to change state law, too. What do you do with the tools at your disposal as the leader of the city?

Whitney Tilson
One very important tool is the bully pulpit. If an outsider like me becomes mayor, I will have a strong mandate and go to Albany and fight for a number of changes. But your question is, okay, what do you directly control as mayor? The appointment of the police commissioner. I think on his fourth attempt, we finally have a good one under Mayor Adams. I’ve heard nothing but great things about Jessica Tisch. I’ve read her recent speech to the Association for a Better New York and I think both in terms of the policy she’s calling for, policy changes, but also her just good, much better management of the system—

Myles Miller
Was there something wrong with the first police commissioner?

Whitney Tilson
No, I think, I actually think she was reasonable and–but, threatened Mayor Adams, and he fired her. But I think Jessica Tisch has done a particularly good job. And I don’t know if you’ve seen the crime statistics, the first couple months this year are down significantly and I’m hoping that wasn’t just the cold weather, that part of that’s her leadership kicking in.

Nicole Gelinas
Would you keep Commissioner Tisch on if she would want to stay, and if not, what would you look for in your own police commissioner?

Whitney Tilson
I would be inclined to. I don’t want to make a firm commitment, just because a lot can change between now and 10 months from now, but she’s done an excellent job so far.

Nicole Gelinas
Would you look for someone with NYPD experience, a civilian, an outsider? What would you want in your own commissioner?

Whitney Tilson
All of the things being equal, someone who has experience, ideally starting as a beat cop, someone from within the system. But I keep an open mind whether that has to be someone from New York. And Commissioner Tisch is doing a great job despite never having been a beat cop. I’d keep an open mind.

Josh Greenman
You’ve supported using machine learning and predictive analytics in policing. Can you explain why, how you would use those tools, and also, what about facial recognition? What about facial recognition, maybe in police-worn body cameras? What about gun scanners? What other technological tools would you want to try to employ?

Whitney Tilson
Generally speaking, policing today is vastly different than it was years ago. Another reason why I oppose going back to stop-and-frisk, for example, is — I always opposed it. It was illegal, immoral and alienated the communities it was supposed to be helping, but it’s also, particularly today, just bad policing. There are surveillance cameras everywhere. Why would you just go randomly stopping people, when, with tracking social media, with surveillance cameras, etcetera., It’s much less of a mystery today who’s out there creating mayhem in our communities, and it should be very targeted. Crime is not random, either geographically or by the people committing it. So I’d be using every piece of technology — and I understand, for example, following social media, a lot of the shootings in the real world occur, you know, start with disputes online. So of course we should be tracking that.

Josh Greenman
You say every piece of technology. There are cameras in a lot of places. There’s a controversial face recognition company called ClearView AI, that scrapes photos from every source, and right now it’s not officially used by the NYPD. Would you want the NYPD to officially use a really robust facial recognition technology in combination with cameras, and should police-worn body cameras be part of that?

Whitney Tilson
I want to be careful that we don’t go and become China. I have been there and seen, I think that goes too far toward authoritarianism. But generally speaking, using technology to monitor the city and keep people safe, for sure. I very strongly support police wearing body cameras. I think it actually protects civilians, but protects them as well. I’ve talked to many cops who say, “Yeah, my body camera is, you know, somebody filed a complaint against me that was totally bogus, and thank goodness for the body camera that showed that I didn’t do what they said I did.”

Eric Adams / Migrant Crisis / Right to Shelter

Ben Smith
We were just talking before that some of the candidates are running on what sounds a bit like Eric Adams’ platform. And everything you said, I don’t know, to me to some degree, makes the case of like, let’s keep the guy. You know what, took him a little while, maybe took a federal indictment to get him to get his act together, but numbers are in the right direction. You seem to like this police commissioner. I don’t know, if you don’t make it, do you think he’s a pretty decent second choice?

Whitney Tilson
No. He’s corrupt and incompetent. He’s surrounded himself with way too many cronies who are corrupt and incompetent and I think the last count is 26 people who he hired as top people are under investigation, indictment, or resigned in disgrace. I can also look at the polls and see the lowest polling numbers in history. I think he, Cuomo, and I would, on a policy basis, be in the centrist lane. So I do give him credit for a good speechwriter. And I do agree with some of his policies. Being on your fourth police commissioner in three years resulted in a lot of turmoil that wasn’t necessary, that’s hurt crime fighting in this city. I don’t think he’s hired a super reform-oriented schools chancellor—a big, important issue to me. I think he was right to support City of Yes [for Housing Opportunity], but didn’t have the political clout and ability to really push hard for it, so what passed was much too watered down. So no, I credit some of his policies but do not think he deserves another term.

Christina Greer
So how do you think the mayor’s done dealing with the migrant crisis?

Whitney Tilson
I would give him a C, I guess. Not an F, certainly not an A. I do appreciate when a quarter million people showed up here with high needs, very suddenly, as many as 10,000 a day…I had an interesting conversation, actually, with Zach Iscol, who runs the Department of Emergency Services, and he gave me a better insight about what a crisis that was, and how the city was struggling to deal with it. He pointed out that they opened 250 shelters around the city to try and provide housing for this sudden influx of people, and there were very few that were families that were out on the streets overnight. So I’ll give him credit for that, but some of the no-bid contracts, when I look at what we spent relative to other cities, I don’t think it was super efficiently run, But we threw a lot of money at it and it could have been worse but it should have been better.

Christina Greer
Do you believe in the city’s universal right to shelter? And if not, what’s your plan?

Whitney Tilson
I don’t think it should apply to people who are not U.S. citizens. I think it is for New Yorkers having a right to shelter. I have no problem with that applying to New Yorkers. Anyone who’s not a citizen, I think the city should try and help them, try and help the migrants find shelter. But as far as a legal, binding right, I disagree with that.

Christina Greer
How would you define a New Yorker?

Whitney Tilson
Tax-paying U.S. citizen? By the way, I’m not saying, by the way, that they have no rights or that we shouldn’t try and help them with housing. I’m saying our unique right to shelter law, which only exists in New York City, was originally passed in a lawsuit as a settlement of a lawsuit for a few hundred people, and now it’s just been expanded to include everyone, and I think we need to be judicious with our resources and prioritize tax-paying citizens of New York.

Akash Mehta
You note on your website that New York City has lost about 700,000 people, the second-biggest decline of any large city. The state is number one for population decline, and we’re also an aging state and city. Many economists would say that migrants is exactly what the doctor ordered. What would you say to that?

Whitney Tilson
I think from a purely economic perspective, having illegal immigrants and migrants — who are actually in a different category, they’re actually here legally, asylum-seekers — are doing a lot of the construction and low-wage jobs in a high-cost city. I think it would be an economic disaster, what Trump is proposing to do, try and deport 12 million people. Spike our inflation through the roof, severely hurt our economy, and I have no interest in cooperating with that.

Josh Greenman
But if you’re mayor, you don’t want to be a magnet, it sounds like, for lots and lots of migrants, but you do want to remain a sanctuary city of sorts. What is your message? You say, “don’t come here” to migrants? You say, “come but we’re not going to give you very generous services”? How do you finesse that message?

Whitney Tilson
It’s a tricky one. I think this year, from the numbers I’ve seen, we’re going to spend $4.7 billion on 238,000 migrants. That’s $20,000 a migrant. As best I can tell, that is far higher than any other city. And in a city where we’re spending $14,000 per average New Yorker, we’re spending 20,000 bucks per migrant. I think that’s too much. I’m a descendant of immigrants myself, and I feel for people who have come to this country searching for a better life. The Biden administration made a terrible mistake in releasing all, millions of asylum-seekers into the country very suddenly. And we have to grapple with this, just like a bunch of other major cities, manage it more effectively, but there’s a limit to how much we should spend and how much we should roll out the welcome mat in a time of tight budgetary crises, when we need money for a lot of other things.

Liena Zagare
How would you determine how much is too much to spend?

Whitney Tilson
Hire real experts and ask them to go look at every area of spending and then prioritize that versus the other priorities.

Education

Liena Zagare
Turning to education, you’ve been a big charter school supporter. How does that influence how you think about managing public schools?

Whitney Tilson
I’ve seen what can happen if school leaders and teams at the schools and teachers and all have autonomy and can totally focus on delivering for kids. At KIPP, we take kids — we deliberately locate our schools in areas where the kids have a 9% chance of graduating from college, and we’re sending roughly 65%, so it’s not a small difference. So empowering teams of adults running schools, that are running really successful schools, and helping them expand. It’s not just charter schools, there are many great examples of regular public schools, but it’s a system right now that really lacks much accountability as schools that chronically are failing kids just seem to go on year after year. And I believe the accountability that exists for charter schools — every five years, we have to go up in front of a charter commission and justify our existence or we can lose our charter, and we’re public schools, 97% of our funding is public dollars. I think every school should have that kind of accountability.

Liena Zagare
How much do you think kids not showing up at school affects how well they do at school? Because charter schools have really good attendance records.

Whitney Tilson
Tremendously.

Josh Greenman
How many charters should we have? We have a charter cap. Should we have a charter cap? Should we be an all-charter system like New Orleans? What do you think the limits are, if any?

Whitney Tilson
Charter schools right now are about 15% of New York City public school kids, and I believe I’m the only candidate in the field who’s said, of course we should lift the charter cap. And I suppose that’s because I’m the only one who’s willing to cross the teachers union, which opposes that. So I’m in favor of strong mayoral control, which I’m not sure if I’m unique among the field for that. But lifting the charter cap, the constraint on charters shouldn’t be some artificial cap. It should be, do we have high-quality charters, public schools that want to have a proven track record, that want to expand? Absolutely. But that shouldn’t just be for charters. It should be for any high-quality school that’s got a great model that wants to expand. The city should be funding them and providing them space, which is critical as well.

Josh Greenman
As a big supporter over the years of charters, if you look back do you see anything that you think the movement has gotten wrong, anything that particularly big charter school chains, for lack of a better word, have gotten wrong in New York City?

Whitney Tilson
I would say politically on a statewide level, late in the Obama administration, we got too focused on testing and punishing teachers whose kids might not do well on the test and all. And I think we lost the narrative among average parents who by-and-large love their teachers, as do I. I think there are too many variables in terms of kids’ test scores to tie it back and punish a teacher or something like that. As you talked about, maybe they’re housing-unstable or whatever, or there’s been an influx of kids who don’t speak English particularly well, that can cause test scores to go down even if the teacher is doing a great job.

Harry Siegel
You went to Harvard, which has, like everywhere college-wise, no single test or standard. Should we have this SHSAT single-test admissions standard for top [public high] schools in New York? Would you want to keep that, expand that to more schools like Bloomberg did, change that?

Whitney Tilson
I don’t want to change the existing system. I understand the outcomes. At Stuyvesant, 70-plus percent Asian and 1% African-American. I don’t like that, but I’m not willing to mess with the existing system. What I would love to do—

Ben Smith
Do you not like how many Asians there are there? Do you think 70% is too many Asians, is that what you’re saying?

Whitney Tilson
I wish, if I could push a button, I wish our nine specialized schools greater reflected the diversity of this city.

Ben Smith
But specifically, let’s agree that that 30% should be way more diverse. Do you think that 70% is too many Asian kids?

Whitney Tilson
No, I think it simply reflects the admission standard and Asian families at a very young age are sending their kids to test prep and making a big commitment to it and that’s the result.

Myles Miller
If you say that you know that you want the diversity numbers to change, but you’re not willing to change the means in which they get in there, then what is the fix? Is the fix to create more test prep and that kind of thing? Why not change a test if the issue is that this test is the barrier to people who look like me getting into the school?

Whitney Tilson
I worry about the unintended consequences of switching. I think these schools are amazing, and I don’t want to mess with success. What I would love to do is figure out a way to build nine more of these schools. Why have we not built more of these schools? And here’s what I would do for the admission to additional schools: Which is, do it based on the top 5% of graduates by GPA of any middle school. Eighth graders, top 5%, you get automatic admission to these schools. So the new seats we create, let’s do it based on your academic performance in middle school. And I think that that would obviously have a result in the new schools having a much broader range of students.

Myles Miller
One thing that I found sort of correlates, and it’s a little different, but at the Fire Department, we had an issue with the test, right? That Black, Hispanic, Asian candidates were not getting into the Fire Department because, much like in SHSAT, the parents, you know, weren’t pushing them, that kind of thing. And what we did was we changed the requirements, the barriers to entry. So why wouldn’t that work in this instance? Why wouldn’t we change the barriers to entry to a very select few number of schools? Why create more schools, instead of trying to diversify the existing schools?

Whitney Tilson
Yeah. I think of the 1,800 schools in New York, we’ve got nine schools where admission is done this way. Everybody knows the rules. Any family,, if they want to put their kids through the intensive test prep, can have a fair shot at it, and I worry about unintended consequences trying to mess with that.

Josh Greenman
I don’t want to dwell on this one too much, but intensive test prep can cost a lot of money. There are different forms of it, and in some communities it may be more ingrained, but you can spend thousands of dollars on test prep, just like families spend thousands of dollars on prep for the G&T test for 4-year-olds.

Whitney Tilson
I fully support—there are programs in the New York City public school system, my understanding is, that do the test prep in the context of public schools, and I support that. I want every, I want kids to have the opportunity. If parents and kids decide they want to go to those schools, we should help them prepare for it without huge private expense. But I don’t want to change the admission system.

Harry Siegel
Just one more education question before we move on. Can you talk about where your kids went, K-12, and how that might inform how you would run the full public school system?

Whitney Tilson
My three daughters went to K-through-12 at Nightingale after Central Synagogue Nursery School, and had a great experience. I went through public schools through sixth grade, and then my parents, both teachers, sacrificed a lot to send me to private schools. I was out in rural western Massachusetts, and so I’ve seen the enormous difference high-quality schools can make, both in my own experience, my children’s experience, and at KIPP, for example. Giving parents options and creating, most importantly, just creating high-quality schools, is absolutely transformative, and is the key, I think, to solving inequality and so many of our society’s issues, and it starts with the schools.

Myles Miller
You wouldn’t have sent your kids to KIPP, though, right? Or would you? I always wonder about that, because in every other city, you know you go to DC and stuff, there are white kids at KIPP, white kids at charter schools. I’m a charter school kid—

Whitney Tilson
Which one?

Myles Miller
Bronx Prep, which became a Democracy Prep — and we were the blackest school I’d ever been to in my life. Hispanic too, but Black, there was not a single person anything else. So I’m always interested in what stops white people from sending their kids to charter schools.

Whitney Tilson
I think most people tend to send their kids to neighborhood schools and charter schools, the whole movement by and large has been focused on serving kids who are being most poorly served by public schools, which systematically, systemically, tend to be low-income, minority kids. That’s where these schools tend to locate. And I’ve been to 56 KIPP schools around the country, and I’ve seen one white kid in 56 visits, right? But look, I think Success Network has actually put a few schools, there’s one on the Upper West Side. One of my friends sent one of his kids — three of his kids! — to Success. Interestingly, one ended up at Stuyvesant. So, I think it would be great if—I mean Success is 56 schools. KIPP is only 18 schools in the city. So they’ve had, they’ve had more schools, and have put a few in more diverse neighborhoods, and I think that’s great.

Josh Greenman
Would you want to pick a charter school leader as schools chancellor?

Whitney Tilson
I’d look hard at it. That’s where I think the sort of reform-oriented talent is; Teach for America alumni generally. So, not making any commitments. But I’d look hard in that sector. By the way, one other idea that I wanted to throw out there related to education is: Right now, I don’t know if you saw the latest NAEP scores, but 48% of fourth-graders reading in below basic, the lowest category. So the trend here? When Bloomberg came in 23 years ago, it was 53%. Thanks to mayoral control, a mayor willing to use it, Chancellor Joel Klein, just going out there every day, grinding it out and, where needed, doing battle with the teachers unions, which almost never happens under traditional mayors, that 53% declined very steadily down to 38%, an enormous difference. Since Bloomberg left, even pre-pandemic, it was going back up.

And this is, I think, the most fundamental educational metric. So how is it that half of fourth-graders basically can’t read, not even at a basic level? I want to bring that number to zero. How do you do that? You test kids at the end of third grade, and if they can’t read, they don’t get promoted. You end social promotion in third grade. And I think that is a forcing mechanism for the system, and it tells the system, you’ve had the kids now for five years, starting in pre-K, and a kid reading below basic is well below grade level, and statistically speaking, is game over…If you take a large group of kids, that’s your entire prison, homeless, welfare population. And I think the school system has been failing kids for five years and can’t read at even a basic level, they’ve got to keep working at it. Kids don’t just get promoted along. We’ve got to stop the lying to the kids and their parents that, “oh, you’re doing fine” and passing kids along all the way through 12th grade.

Liena Zagare
Would you keep the current reading curriculum?

Whitney Tilson
If by current you mean the old whole language curriculum that was an absolute educational disaster, and replacing it with a phonics-based curriculum — that’s the new curriculum, but it’s taking time to adopt and all, I’m 100% in favor of that.

Liena Zagare
OK, another one is, how would you get kids to show up in school? Because if they don’t show up at school, they don’t get the education they’ve missed, you know, months and months of schooling by the time they get to third grade.

Whitney Tilson
There are a lot of reasons kids don’t show up at school, but by law, they are required to. It’s truancy, and so I think you have to enforce that but also you’ve got to make schools more attractive—

Liena Zagare
You’re talking about parents bringing kids to school, because these are, you know, kindergartens or first-graders?

Whitney Tilson
Yes, that’s what I’m talking about. And it is required that you bring your kids to school, and we should enforce that.

Christina Greer
You mentioned Teach for America alum. Do you know how many Teach for America alums stay in school after their two-year requirement?

Whitney Tilson
Not off the top of my head.

Housing

Harry Siegel
So shifting over to housing for a minute, but staying with Bloomberg in a way, you tweeted that as mayor, your number one priority is catalyzing a house/apartment building boom, so headlines would read “New York City Rents and Home Prices Tumble on Massive Building Spree.”

Whitney Tilson
Yes. I was citing an Austin [Texas] article.

Harry Siegel
So here in New York, how are you gonna go about doing that, given the Bloomberg-era downzonings and the many neighborhoods that are blocking greater density through historic district expansion?

Whitney Tilson
The tweet you’re referring to, is about an article in the last week in Austin, which, are you familiar with it? I’ll give you a quick summary. In 2021, Austin, there’s a big influx of people post-pandemic. Austin is a hot area. Rents rose 25% in one year. Austin city leaders basically declared a state of emergency because they recognized that being an affordable city was key to the city’s future. They slashed the permitting process times. Changed zoning rules to allow taller buildings for housing lots. It used to be, you have to have a 5,500-foot lot for a single family house. They slashed that by two-thirds, so you could put three smaller houses on the same size lot. Within two years, there was a 15% increase in the amount of apartments and homes in the city. And as a result, rents are down 22%, housing prices are down 23%. When I look at that and I see what we’re doing, basically exactly the opposite in New York, where our permitting process is endless, our zoning rules are overwhelming. And so I tweeted out we should be learning what’s going on here and applying that. As mayor, I would want to apply these lessons to New York. So that was big picture.

Ben Smith
Part of the political challenge there is you’re telling homeowners, most of whose wealth is tied up in their houses, we want to drive down the cost of your house. How do you sell that?

Whitney Tilson
Nationwide, two-thirds of people own, one-third of people rent. In New York City, it’s exactly the reverse. And I can understand if you’re housing-stable and you don’t want the value of your property to go down, and maybe you don’t want new people coming into your neighborhood. “Who are they?” You know, whatever. So there’s a strong anti-development undercurrent, but I think that does enormous damage to our city and so I will fight against the NIMBYism crowd.

Ben Smith
Do you think Mike Bloomberg pandered to that crowd, and do you think he made mistakes in doing that? I mean that’s a big part of his coalition.

Whitney Tilson
The homeowners, and all. Well, look at the results of the city. I’m not aware there was some big housing boom under Mayor Bloomberg, and I want to catalyze that.

Ben Smith
Do you think he sort of slides on the downzonings? Do you think he should be criticized more for that?

Whitney Tilson
I’m reluctant to criticize a guy who I think did so much good—

Ben Smith
Is that because you want his political support?

Whitney Tilson
I don’t—I have not asked for it, and don’t expect it. I don’t think he’ll be endorsing. I’ve long been a fan of Mayor Bloomberg, even before I ran for office. One of the things, interestingly, on this housing issue, and generally speaking, having read the transcripts of all the other candidates, it’s not clear that a single one of them has spoken to a single business owner in this city, or a single investor or real estate developer. Like I was seeing these hour-long interviews, I was like, you’ve talked to every government official, you know the ins and outs of every government spending program. It’s bizarre to me, because I’m from the business world, and a member of the Young Presidents’ Organization. As part of my campaign, I’ve gone out and talked with numerous restaurant owners, numerous developers, and both my background and what I’m hearing is, we need to recognize that we can’t rest on our laurels. We’re an incredibly wealthy city. Five percent of U.S. GDP is generated in the five boroughs of New York. This is the center of finance, for sure, second maybe only to Silicon Valley for tech, etcetera. But increasingly, business people are basically telling me two things: Number one, this is an amazing city to invest, certainly to build any kind of housing, to operate in business, the workforce — off the charts great. Second thing they tell me is basically, quote, they treat us like the enemy.

Josh Greenman
You mentioned developers. So developers often say, “oh, that project won’t pencil out. I can’t do it because the margins are too thin.” The rest of the city often sees developers doing quite well, or they think they see developers doing quite well. Can you square that circle and explain what the path forward is where developers can do well and we can see more housing built but maybe developers don’t do incredibly well?

Whitney Tilson
If you are a property owner and you have large amounts of money, you will appear to do quite well. These are wealthy people. But they can invest anywhere in the world, and I can tell you, if you just look at the lack of housing being built here, and when I talk to the developers, and they’re like, “Yeah, we’d love to develop here.” But with interest rates up to 5% now, the carrying costs. It used to take two years to get a development done in New York. Now it takes four years, and that’s four years of carrying costs. It used to be at 1% now it’s at 4% or 8%. The numbers really don’t pencil out. And so I was like, “Well, so what are you doing?”

“We stopped doing business in New York, and we’re developing it, went, bought a building and rehab it down in Arlington, Virginia,” one of them told me, “right across the street from the Amazon headquarters,” which is just extra brain damage hearing that because, of course, that should have been here as well. I even talked to two guys recently who are like, oh yeah, we’re developing over Newark. And I was like, oh my God, if we’re losing to Newark, things must be really bad here. But it’s not just developers. I’ve talked to a number of restaurant owners, and they say right now, it’s the toughest environment it’s ever been in 20-plus years in New York, in terms of mentally ill people coming in and frightening their guests, coming in and stealing from them. You know, the headaches they get operating some seats outside. The health inspectors when they come in, quote, treat us like the enemy. Instead of trying to help us get the A grade that we want and being proactive, they’re playing gotcha and just looking to issue fines. The sentiment out there in the business and community in general is pretty bad, and we need to completely change that.

Rikers Island and City Jails

Akash Mehta
I have a couple of questions on this theme. One is just in terms of who the different mayoral candidates are talking to, who you spend your time with. You want to revise bail reform. When is the last time that you’ve talked to someone who’s been incarcerated at Rikers?

Whitney Tilson
I was there a month ago and talked with a number of folks who were incarcerated there, and it was a very sobering experience. Rikers is a hellhole. And the most poignant, powerful thing someone said to me, who I won’t identify by name but someone who’s been there a long time working with inmates, said, “Nobody leaves here better than when they came in.” Happy to talk about my idea for what we need to do for Rikers and the borough-based plans if you’re interested.

Myles Miller
How’d you wind up at Rikers?

Whitney Tilson
I went as a private citizen, not identified as a mayoral candidate, with a social service organization that sort-of kept us on the down-low so I won’t name it.

Josh Greenman
Since you brought up Rikers, can you briefly explain what your plans are if we don’t get down to the numbers needed to open those four jails?

Whitney Tilson
I confidently predict we will have five primary jails in the system, long-term going forward. I don’t think actually closing Rikers completely is likely to happen. Here’s what I think is going to happen. The City Council is obviously going to extend the August 2027 deadline because none of the borough-based facilities will be open by then. But you’ve got about 6,600 people at Rikers. And the main problem is we’re only building 3,300 beds. Maybe throw in some mental health beds that are also necessary, maybe you get to 4,000, but that’s still a long ways from the 6,600 people at Rikers now. It’s proven that you cannot fix Rikers at its current size. I think if you open the borough-based facilities and move people into them, you shrink the size of Rikers. The physical facilities are in horrible condition. But if you shrink Rikers to, let’s say 1,500 to 2,000 inmates, you tear down existing facilities, and you build, instead of 10 current ones, maybe you have three brand-new ones in addition to four brand new borough-based facilities. I think you have five smaller facilities as opposed to one mega, disastrous facility. I think that’s the long-term answer.

City Government Workforce

Akash Mehta
Back on the theme of talking to developers, you tell a story very compellingly of having met a developer who wants to build 1,000 affordable units, couldn’t get a meeting, or could barely get a meeting with City Planning, was just sort of shunted around on Zoom meetings with junior staffers, and part of your solution for this is increasing staffing at the Buildings Department, the housing department, and the City Planning department. Overall, New York City’s public workforce is significantly below pre-pandemic levels. Is this part of a sort of broader analysis of yours about the city’s governance capacity? Do you think beyond the issue of housing, we need to be investing in our public workforce?

Whitney Tilson
The mayor appoints, best count I heard, is the top 155 people in the administration. So the almost 50 heads of the departments, but then the second level people as well. Getting people in there who can, one, serve the people of New York better, and two, find cost savings and run things more efficiently, are the kind of people I’ll be looking for. I’m not quite sure whether the problems in developing real estate have to do with understaffing or just sort of an attitude of bureaucracy and slow-rolling things, because from the developers I talk to, it’s the uncertainty, they don’t know if and when they’re going to get an answer. In this particular development, it was two years and $2 million of investment, and never got an answer, never really got a yes or a no. And so finally walked away, and the property is still there to develop. So I want to do what Austin did, and basically say, OK, how can we dramatically accelerate this process and give a lot more certainty to developers that we’ll give you an answer, we’ll be back to you, “Here’s what you got to modify,” or whatever. But it should happen within two months, not two years.

Akash Mehta
I want to stay on this question of staff. Other departments, too, say that they’re understaffed and therefore perform extremely badly on the Mayor’s Management Report, from the environmental department to the Parks Department, and overall the size of city government has decreased. Do you think the size of city government in terms of the number of people should increase?

Whitney Tilson
I can’t say across the entire city government. It would be agency by agency. I would start with, we’re at a 34-year low in terms of the number of police officers, and we need to be about 10% more to get back to where we were five years ago. So that would be one area for sure, of increasing staffing.

Josh Greenman
What about the class-size law and teachers? Do we have too many teachers?

Whitney Tilson
Not yet, because the law hasn’t really gone into effect yet, but this is a terribly misguided law. It is a proven way to spend a lot more money and get no change in student outcomes. And the reason for it is the second-order effect, which is, everyone’s like, well, of course, it’s nice to have smaller classes. The problem is by law, you’re mandating hiring a ton more teachers, and the system is already struggling to attract qualified, experienced teachers. And so when you suddenly increase the number of teachers that have to be hired, average teacher quality, the newer teachers coming in are less experienced and less qualified. So the tradeoff of smaller classes is you have more classes with less experienced, less qualified teachers. So it’s the absolute favorite proposal of teachers unions, because it dramatically increases their enrollment and revenues. But go look at where it’s been tried around the country, there is no evidence that it helps kids.

NIMBYism, Housing, and Community Input

Nicole Gelinas
So you’ve used the word NIMBY. Talk about what that means in practice, because New York City has a long history of neighborhood residents banding together to stop projects, projects that everyone at the time thought were good ideas. And I mean everyone, not just developers, but the conventional wisdom said you should build this highway through this neighborhood, the people in the way are just obstructionists. Should people who have invested in a neighborhood or who have rented in a neighborhood for decades, should they have no say over literally what is built in your own backyard?

Whitney Tilson
No, I do not think they should have no say. I think we have allowed the pendulum to swing too far, where a loud group of people are able to kill or delay projects. So I was just reading up on the Brooklyn Botanical Garden development, adjacent to it, and that was delayed, you know, 355 desperately-needed units was delayed for how long? Because it was going to cast a shadow over a small part of that—

Nicole Gelinas
But you need a park. This is already a very dense area. Why — this was zoned for housing — the developers could build, as-of-right housing? Why is it good to take away light from the park to spot-zone one building and give one developer a windfall?

Whitney Tilson
Because we have a housing crisis, and we should prioritize building. This would have been 355 units, 100 affordable units, in a city where we have a total crisis. And in order to address this crisis, I’m willing to live with a little shade on a small part of a beautiful—I love the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens—

Myles Miller
But if it was shade, you know, over where you live, I don’t think you’d like it.

Josh Greenman
How big is the tallest building on your block?

Whitney Tilson
Well, it depends how you define my block, but my building is probably 13 stories, the one across the street [from the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens], this particular development, was 10 stories. It didn’t seem unreasonable—

Josh Greenman
Would you be OK with 30 stories on either side?

Whitney Tilson
Yes, I mean, it’s a block away from me, at Mount Sinai. There are much taller buildings one or two blocks from me, right on Central Park, that cast a little shade on Central Park during the day. So let me give you another example. I was at a mayoral forum downtown. You guys are all familiar with the infill project, the Everett [sic]-Chelsea plan down there, and I was almost literally booed when I said, this is brilliant, and we should be doing this everywhere. And there were people coming up to me and saying, “No, no, everybody’s going to be displaced and all that.” And I was like, no, that’s not true. By law, nobody can be displaced. Everyone, the people who are living there now, will have a new apartment to move into…

It’s having NYCHA use its incredibly valuable property to strike deals with private developers who will put up the money to — instead of rehabbing dilapidated old buildings, which we don’t have the money for and which doesn’t make sense — build brand-new ones. Give the existing residents brand-new apartments and [if] the developer is willing to do so, to get private apartments they can put on the market in an area that really needs higher-end housing as well, market-rate housing.

Akash Mehta
One contributor to the housing crisis, certainly not the biggest contributor, but, has been the combination of multiple units, people buying units next to each other and combining them. If you could ban that, would you?

Whitney Tilson
No, I don’t think that’s a major problem. That’s, you know, one-percenters in high-end buildings—

Myles Miller
Not necessarily. I mean, my aunt lives in Fordham, in a building, and she combined two apartments and she’s definitely not a one-percenter. She worked at Clinique and—

Josh Greenman
And there is an issue with NYCHA people holding on to large apartments that are more than they need—

Myles Miller
And over-income tenants in NYCHA—

Akash Mehta
Can you say more about merging units?

Whitney Tilson
If people want to buy neighboring apartments and combine it, that’s their right.

Liena Zagare
What do you think the role of government is in such a situation, to redevelop public property, to develop affordable housing?

Whitney Tilson
Generally speaking, I think the role of government should be to catalyze as much private-sector investment and development as possible. And again, as I read the transcripts of the other folks you’ve interviewed, it was all about government doing it, and government putting up the money. And I can tell you, in this environment where federal money is likely getting cut off, whatever government could do, even prior to the Trump administration, is dwarfed by the amount of private investment that would love to invest in this city and build all types of new housing, and we should be trying to figure out every way we can change zoning rules, ease the permitting and regulatory issues at the city, and it doesn’t mean the community has no say. I’m just skeptical when I hear “the community,” because I can tell you, the majority of the people in the community are suffering from super-high rents and are literally leaving the city because a handful of their neighbors who have stable housing are out there fighting the new developments they need to bring down prices.

Christina Greer
What do you say to people who are nervous when you talk about the private markets? This feels a little bit like petit Elonism for some people who might say, OK, so you and your millionaire, billionaire friends will have a vision of the city that may not involve the community,

Whitney Tilson
I would say the communities, there’s still going to be a process where the community can weigh in. But I think, you know, I look at the details of ULURP, and I’m just like, does this take place in Nashville, in Austin, in other places that don’t have housing crises and the answer is generally not, I think the pendulum, this is what happens in one-party cities where well-intentioned ideas—of course there should be community input, of course there should be environmental review, of course there should be historical preservation considerations—, but what has happened is that over the years, it’s built up to just a choking, stifling system and as a result New Yorkers are getting priced out of our city and we’re losing population at alarming rates. It’s been particularly acute the last five years. But you know, big picture, this state has lost 13 House seats since 1970 and Florida has gained 13. What is more fundamental than people voting with their feet and where they’re moving from and where they’re moving to?

Akash Mehta
We’re going to ask you in a couple moments about the state of the race and some of your competitors, but just using housing as a transition, a lot of what you’re saying is what some of the left-most candidates in this race are saying. So Brad Lander today came out with a housing plan that he wants to build 500,000 units over the next 10 years. He wants to restore City of Yes to its original version before the water-down. He wants to build on city-owned golf courses. Zellnor Myrie wants to build a million units. Whereas Andrew Cuomo, his affordability agenda barely says anything about upzoning. He has not, to my knowledge, supported the City of Yes. Given that you say that this would be your number one priority, do you think housing is a reason for voters to rank you and Brad Lander and Zellnor Myrie above Andrew Cuomo?

Whitney Tilson
I’m going to wait to see what Cuomo comes out with. He just entered the race a few days ago. I suspect he will have similar views, and I’m a little skeptical of people who are pretty far left who are now scrambling toward the center because they see the political wind shifting.

Nicole Gelinas
Can our infrastructure handle half-a-million units of new housing? One of the issues in Austin, in Florida, is very badly planned cheap sprawl developments. How would you look at transit and transportation and sewage?

Whitney Tilson
It’s going to be a—We’re a very large city, and I don’t think it would happen overnight, but what I’m talking about is we’re building 28,000 and we need to build 50,000 new units a year—

Nicole Gelinas
And how would you know that the housing crisis is over? Is there some definition that anybody can afford to live in any neighborhood with any income? I mean, what makes it done? Where is there not a housing crisis?

Whitney Tilson
I mean, I don’t think it’s yes or no, ipso facto done at a certain point. Rents nationwide have been declining 20 consecutive months, and in New York they’re still going up. So let’s see at least a flattening of the curve so people don’t feel like it’s just going to go up forever. And I think it’d be a fabulous thing if we had a problem of oversupply. Vacancy is currently at 1.4%. It if was at a more normal, high single-digit rate, people looking for housing felt like they had negotiating power, and if rents and housing prices went down 20-odd percent, that would be—

Nicole Gelinas
Can that be done when a third of the units are regulated and there’s not a lot of turnover or filtering—

Whitney Tilson
That makes it harder for sure.

Josh Greenman
Last thing that I had on this. New York is an interesting city in that it contains a lot of semi-suburban areas. It has Staten Island. A lot of Queens is single-family. Do you envision highrises in a lot of those places? Do you find ways to actually increase density more gently in a lot of those places? It’s an incredible diversity [of density]. The Upper East Side is the exception.

Whitney Tilson
Look in those areas, I think making it easier to make accessory dwelling units would be a key thing. I don’t foresee putting 30-story apartment buildings in residential areas like that.

Josh Greenman
Why not?

Liena Zagare
And where would you put them?

Whitney Tilson
In places that already have, like frankly, my neighborhood, in areas that already have high rises—

Nicole Gelinas
Areas that are already pretty dense, have to become even more dense?

Whitney Tilson
What I’m talking about in terms of creating accessible dwelling units and all creates more density in less dense areas as well. So I’m just talking about what types of housing go in what types of cities, so it’d probably be reasonably consistent with the neighborhood.

Christina Greer
To Josh’s point, though, in a say, Queens-type residential neighborhood or in a Staten Island neighborhood, then what kind of housing would you—

Whitney Tilson
A lot more of the same.

Christina Greer
Like single family homes?

Harry Siegel
Where would you put single family homes in those neighborhoods? There’s not a lot of just empty lots or land here.

Whitney Tilson
I mean, a single family house might be an accessible dwelling unit on an existing lot, for example.

Serious Mental Illness

Josh Greenman
Real quick. I know we’re gonna move to politics. But on serious mental illness, which a lot of people are talking about in this race, are you for the bill that’s currently in the state legislature to change the standards for involuntary commitment and involuntary removal?

Whitney Tilson
Yes, 100%.

Josh Greenman
Is there anything else that you add to the conversation that you think is important beyond passing that law?

Whitney Tilson
Yes, I think the state needs to own that it wildly over-deinstitutionalized. In 1960, there were 93,000 long-term psychiatric beds in the state. Today there are 3,500. I asked somebody what happened to those 90,000 people? And they said, many of them, we gave a bus ticket to the Port Authority. So I think a lot of the crisis we’re seeing in our streets and the mental health crisis is a result of people in need of long-term care. It’s not just a short-term thing, and we need to work with the state to open up some of those shuttered facilities, so we can provide long-term care for the people who need it.

Josh Greenman
What share of the blame does Andrew Cuomo have there?

Whitny Tillson
Some of it. This happened over the last 50 years, and it happened under him as well, and New York’s borne the brunt of it both in terms of bus tickets to the Port Authority, but of the mental, long-term mental health beds statewide closed since 2000, 72% were in New York City. They didn’t even need a bus ticket to the Port Authority.

Andrew Cuomo, State Policy, and Party Politics

Nicole Gelinas
Thinking of Cuomo, many large business, financial, and big real estate interests are allegedly supporting him. Do you think overall he was a good governor, and why should the big developers and businesses support you rather than him?

Whitney Tilson
The first eight years, I would say he was a good governor. I think as his troubles mounted, and when the New York State Senate flipped [Democratic], he signed a number of pieces of legislation that went too far, such as bail reform, the Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act, both in 2019. Both were good ideas, and I agree with much of what’s in them. Bail reform not giving judges dangerousness [discretion] was disastrous. The discovery reform has been a complete disaster. It absolutely snarled our DA’s offices in paperwork.

And on the Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act, in order to prevent abuses from landlords of rent-stabilized apartments from, you know, replacing the dishwasher, and then using that as an excuse to double rent and force people out there were bad actors, and that it was good that that was reined in. The problem is that the pendulum now went so far that an apartment that needs $100,000 to $300,000 of renovation after it’s vacated to be put back on the market, the owner isn’t allowed to raise rents to recoup any of that investment and therefore they’ve padlocked. I’ve heard numbers anywhere from 25,000 to 100,000 rent-stabilized apartments are currently empty and padlocked because this law went too far. We need to give owners of buildings incentives so it’s not just a question of building new housing, but to invest in them, to upgrade, to maintain our existing and expand our existing housing stock, and this law on rent stabilized units has curtailed that dramatically.

Akash Mehta
So do you wish that Republicans had kept the State Senate?

Whitney Tilson
No. Overall, no. I’m a Democrat, and I’m glad that we have control of the state. But what I’ve seen is, is that the unintended side effects in one-party cities and states, and this happens in red cities and states as well, extremists tend to take over when there’s no political opposition and I feel like that’s what’s happened to my party,

Josh Greenman
What makes you a Democrat rather than an independent in this race? Why not run as an independent?

Whitney Tilson
I do consider myself quite independent, but I’m a lifelong Democrat, and I want to fight to bring my party back to the center, and I can’t do that from outside the party. Wouldn’t want to do that. I’m committed to my party like I have been for my whole life.

Akash Mehta
What are major things that—if you’re overall glad that the state legislature is one party, what are major achievements since 2019 that you support?

Whitney Tilson
I thought the Clean Slate Act, for example, was a good piece of criminal justice reform that didn’t go too far. Generally speaking, the state’s priorities in terms of creating a robust social safety net and so forth for people, like them, protecting LBGTQ rights, gay marriage was earlier but you know, those are all great things. And I just think we as Democrats need to be careful not to go too far when we can. I saw it happen on bail reform, where it’s like, OK, we’re gonna get bail reform, but we got to give judges dangerousness. And then the far left of the coalition is like, wait, we don’t trust those racist judges, and we just wanted—these are the decarcerate everybody folks.

Myles Miller
Are those the extremists?

Whitney Tillson
Yeah, the defund the police types. Yes.

Myles Miller
Are there extremists who are in office, because you were sort of pointing at, like, what, you know, one-party rule. Who’s an extremist?

Whitney Tilson
I put in this race, Zohran Mamdani is, I believe, very dangerous, because his ideas are extremely dangerous, generally speaking, but he’s also very charming and charismatic. I’ve met him. I’ve been on the mayoral forum circuit with him, and I think he represents the greatest threat to our city in this race.

Josh Greenman
What’s his most dangerous idea in your view?

Whitney Tilson
Singlemost is, I believe he’s very anti-Israel. And I think some of the people he’s associated himself with are virulently anti-Semitic, and my wife and daughters are Jewish. It’s something personal to me. So that would be the single biggest area. The second biggest area would be he’s been the leader of the defund the police movement. So those would be two areas.

Nicole Gelinas
I was just gonna go back to the takeover of the State Senate. A lot of that was over a very specific issue with Republicans opposing the renewal of the speed cameras, even though it was proven that the speed cameras were saving lives. The people in South Brooklyn, the Republican senator said, “No, we’re gonna block this.” And the safe streets community was very successful in putting that pressure on him. Do you support the speed cameras, the red-light cameras? Would you like to see more or less?

Whitney Tilson
Yes, I actually rode my bike to the subway here. I’m glad that there are as many mechanisms out there to keep cars and trucks at a modest speed, and so yes.

Josh Greenman
And congestion pricing? You’re a big fan?

Whitney Tilson
I’d say a moderate fan now, and I want to do it better. I want to be the mayor that ends congestion in the city. I want to do it the way, for example, Singapore does it, where it’s dynamic pricing and it’s anywhere in the city where there’s congestion. I think people are worried about the wrong tax. The tax is not $9. The taxes are choked streets and highways all over the city that hurt quality of life. Hurt businesses, hurt tourism. So what Singapore does is, in a city of over 6 million people, they put little arches over streets anywhere there’s congestion, and the price varies by the hour, and it’s the computer, computers, programs, behind it aren’t that complex, but it means if it’s at a peak area, at peak rush hour, the price is quite high, until the congestion is dramatically reduced. But if you want to go to the same area and it’s off-peak, it’s free. So I don’t want to increase the revenue collection of it, but I want to broaden congestion pricing to anywhere in the city where there’s congestion until it’s gone.

Nicole Gelinas
So in practice, if the BQE was backed up 6 to 8 a.m., you might pay 20 bucks, and nothing overnight?

Whitney Tilson
Whatever. It would vary by the hour, and I sit in traffic all around the city, not just south of 60th Street. And I think that’s the real cost, and it is possible with modern technology to basically eliminate this.

Josh Greenman
Are there other ways to apply that kind of philosophy, that dynamic kind of pricing, beyond congestion pricing to city services and city taxes?

Whitney Tilson
Do you have any particular ideas in mind? I haven’t thought about applying it elsewhere.

Josh Greenman
I hadn’t either.

Akash Mehta
On one more question on the state legislature. As you know, one major function and power of the mayor’s office is to serve as a bully pulpit, to serve as an advocate for [the city’s] agenda in Albany. The state legislature also increased taxes on the wealthy. Right now the millionaire’s tax is up for renewal. Do you support renewing that tax increase? And, as you mentioned that you support the expansion of the social safety net right now, starting next month, 4,000 to 7,000 parents when they apply each month, when they apply for recertification for their childcare, are going to be kicked off because there’s a funding shortfall, and that’s not accounted for in the governor’s executive budget. Would you support increasing taxes to try and fill that shortfall?

Whitney Tilson
My general feeling is we cannot raise taxes either in the city or state any further. We are already at the very top, and it’s forcing businesses and people—you know, 1% of people who pay 47% of the city taxes are already leaving, and so I think that ultimately hurts us. I do not, I am not out there saying, you know, let’s go out and slash taxes. I think that ship has sailed. We’re gonna be a high-tax place. We just can’t make it any worse and give people more and businesses more excuses to leave.

Josh Greenman
Are they leaving? I mean, I thought it was working-class people and middle-class people who were leaving a lot.

Whitney Tilson
Numerically speaking, of the 707,000 people who have left New York in the last almost five years, almost all are working class. But in terms of your tax base, a relatively small number of people who’ve left the city has a hugely disproportionate impact on our budget.

Akash Mehta
So what would you do about the 4,000 to 7,000 kids who are going to lose childcare starting next month in New York City? Would you let them lose childcare? Would you take the money out of the state’s reserves?

Whitney Tilson
Yeah, I wasn’t aware of that particular thing happening, and I would do my best to stop it and continue that child care, but I don’t know the details of how much it costs, where it’s funded from—

Akash Mehta
This year it would cost about, I think, $280 million. Next year would be closer to, I think, $900 million to keep, to keep that program at its current levels.

Whitney Tilson
Why $280 million then to $900 million?

Akash Mehta
Because of the increasing number of people who will be up for sort-of—

Whitney Tilson
Interesting, interesting, I would like to keep it, but I need to look into the details.

Rank the Mayors / State of the Race / Foreign Policy

Josh Greenman
So we’re beginning to wrap up. A political question or two. We like to ask people to rank the last five mayors. I’m guessing you might put Bloomberg first, but rank the last five mayors in order of quality from best to worst.

Whitney Tilson
Bloomberg, clearly number one. You know, in my lifetime, the eight mayors, I would say Giuliani second — hard to imagine, for people who only know the current Giuliani. I think Ed Koch and David Dinkins would be next. And beyond that, I struggle to rank. I think de Blasio was too far left, but I give him credit for universal pre-K, which was a huge achievement.

Josh Greenman
What about a crime decline and a decline in people in jail? Does that not count under de Blasio?

Whitney Tilson
I think he inherited a lot of momentum. I don’t give a huge credit for that. I think the momentum was there under Bloomberg and we sort of killed the momentum late in de Blasio’s term. I think we were complacent that crime was just going to go down no matter what, and we could just decarcerate dramatically. And so this legislation I was talking about did that, and we learned that, no, you can’t. Crime can go back up, and it has.

Christina Greer
So for the record, Adams is not on your rankings.

Whitney Tilson
No, I agree with him on many policies, but he has just been, I think his corruption is sort-of disqualifying.

Harry Siegel
Got to ask, narrow and then big picture, most of your matching funds that you put in for got rejected. You had a consultant you were working with on that, and when I’ve gone to your website I can’t visit it because it says there’s a certificate that’s no good. That’s been so for a while.

Whitney Tilson
It’s working for me and for almost everybody. So your system is somehow flagging it. That’s very frustrating.

Harry Siegel
That may be my computer. But you’ve had this issue with your matching funds. You’re well off but you’re participating in this program, you have to raise money in small dollars from New Yorkers and have those certified. There’s a new Quinnipiac poll showing you at 1%, I believe. Big picture, and you’re saying that the Democratic Party needs a course correction. Andrew Cuomo is offering some of that. Just, what’s your messaging, about why as somebody who hasn’t been in government before, you’re ready to do this, New Yorkers should consider you, what your appeal is at this point, and what shows you’re ready to do it?

Whitney Tilson
There are a lot of questions in there. I mean, in that Quinnipiac poll, the percentage of New Yorkers who are, I forget the exact words, but who are upset or very upset with the direction of the city was at an all-time high at 72%. Only 25% think the city’s going in the right direction. I would put myself in that 72% bucket, and I think New Yorkers are looking at, you know when I decided to enter the race, it was a bunch of different career politicians and different flavors of career politicians, and there wasn’t a Mike Bloomberg or an independent person in the Democratic field. And I think it’s important that there is somebody in there. I have a business background and I think the most important criteria for a mayor is someone who isn’t beholden to the system. I think it’s very difficult for someone within the system to change the system, and so I wanted to give New Yorkers an option for an outsider like what the voters of San Francisco just voted for, for example, in Daniel Lurie. So basically, that’s my pitch: If you’re looking for change, I’m the only change candidate in the race.

Harry Siegel
Why do you think Zohran Mamdani, who you mentioned before, is getting so—there’s a lot of rhetoric involved with what he’s doing. You know, he’s a state Assembly member, helped start a small free-bus pilot program. His accomplishments are in some ways limited, you could argue, for instance, compared to yours. And yet he’s generating lots of people who seem excited, are knocking on doors, giving money, showing up at polls, and you’re offering yourself as this sort-of alternative. I’d just be interested in your theory of the case where things are at and what we should be looking for going forward that’s going to show New Yorkers and Democrats are open to the option you’re providing?

Whitney Tilson
Yeah, I think Mamdani has been the only one on the left who has not tried to tack toward the center. And I think there is, you know, the far-left DSA voting bloc, and he’s the only person in that lane and has consolidated it nicely. So I think there’s a hard ceiling there, at least I hope there is for the sake of this city. So my challenge is I have not had anything go viral yet and so I need to break out there. I’ve got a little less than four months to go out there and shake a lot of hands and do a lot more mayoral forums and talk to a lot more media and get my message of change out there.

Myles Miller
You’re backed by Bill Ackman. That’s helpful, considering his Twitter fingers and all of that kind of stuff. How do you feel that with Cuomo in the race, you know, he’s got a lot of support in the same community you do.

Whitney Tilson
Yeah. Cuomo is the 800-pound gorilla in the race by all accounts. I’ve seen the polls, the betting sites have him 67% likely to be the nominee, which I think is probably about right. His entrance into the race with his universal name recognition narrows the lane for everybody else. But what that means is there’s a one-in-three shot, a one-in-three chance, I think that’s probably right, that he is not the nominee, in which case, it’s a wide open field, and I could be the only guy left standing in the centrist lane.

Josh Greenman
Can you contrast your management philosophy and management style and Cuomo’s management philosophy and management style?

Myles Miller
Well, how many people have you managed?

Whitney Tilson
Thirty to 40 is the largest of the half-dozen small businesses. My career in investing has been investing in large, broken companies that are undergoing turnarounds. So I’ve seen dozens if not hundreds of those that have worked and not worked. You know, I’m talking McDonald’s, Facebook, Walmart, Home Depot, big companies like that. The key to every successful turnaround was a change agent, outsider CEO, bringing in a new team of people but also promoting the best people from within the system. So back to Cuomo, there is nothing I can say that everyone doesn’t already know. I’m not going to spend my time adding voices to the choir of all the people attacking him. The New York voters will decide if they want him or not, and in the one-third chance that he’s not the nominee, I don’t think Adams is electable. I think I’m the only genuine independent and moderate in the field at that point.

Akash Mehta
Do you think that the sexual harassment claims against Cuomo should disqualify him from the race?

Whitney Tilson
I think the voters in New York will have to decide that.

Akash Mehta
You’re comfortable talking about Zohran Mamdani and there are also a lot of voices attacking him. Why aren’t you comfortable talking about Cuomo?

Whitney Tilson
I guess on a policy basis, I’m reasonably closely aligned with him, and I think on a policy basis, I’m very opposite Mamdani. And so I’m focusing on that.

Nicole Gelinas
You ranked Mayor Koch highly. Koch was one of the many mayors who has had a foreign policy of sorts. I know you care very deeply about Ukraine, spending time in Ukraine. Do you think what the president is doing to Ukraine and other issues, is there a place for New York City to be involved there?

Harry Siegel
And this will be our last word to be fair to your time and the other candidates.

Whitney Tilson
I would say, in order, Ukraine, Israel, and Africa, where my parents live and retired, where I grew up, in part—

Christina Greer
That’s 54 countries.

Whitney Tilson
Oh, you’re right. I’ve been to 86 countries, but yes, there are 54 countries in Africa, but particularly East Africa, where I’ve lived and where my parents live. These are all areas of countries or areas of the world I care a lot about. But my job as mayor of New York is going to be focused on managing New York and you know, maybe occasionally have something rhetorical about, let’s say, Ukraine or East Africa. I do think Israel is more relevant to New York in that 10% of the world’s Jews live in the five boroughs of New York. 20% of New York City residents are Jewish. The explosion of anti-Semitism in this city. You know, just, front page of today’s Daily News about more chaos at Barnard.

Nicole Gelinas
Do you think you can be anti-Zionist and not anti-Semitic?

Whitney Tilson
I think it is possible. I think in practice, most of the anti-Zionist—I mean Zionism simply means you believe in Israel as the homeland for the Jewish people. It doesn’t strike me as that controversial. So when—you know, what does that mean? Anti-Zionism means you—a lot of the rhetoric and posters I see is they want to exterminate the country of Israel. That’s a call for genocide.

Josh Greenman
But is a loud, raucous protest with posters that say “Israel equals genocide” and things of that nature—

Whitney Tilson
“From the river to the sea.” “Globalize the Intifada.”

Josh Greenman
If you’re the mayor of New York City. What’s your role in opposing those, if they’re peaceful protests?

Whitney Tilson
Yeah, that’s the key. If they’re peaceful, then, I’m a strong champion of the right to protest. But they have often not turned peaceful. They’ve created an unsafe learning environment. It’s vandalism, and I take quite a hard line on that, and I would also do more digging into what I’ve already been seeing, which is a lot of these protests are not college students engaging in peaceful protest. It’s sham charities funded by China and Qatar that are looking to stir up dissent in this country, and that’s something I would crack down extra hard on if it’s illegal, foreign money coming into sham charities.

Josh Greenman
Thank you. Thank you.

Whitney Tilson
Thank you all. I appreciate it.