Zellnor Myrie Interview Transcript

A transcript of The New York Editorial Board's interview with mayoral candidate Zellnor Myrie.

Zellnor Myrie, a State Senator representing the 20th District in Brooklyn and a candidate in the June 2025 Democratic primary for Mayor, spoke with The New York Editorial Board on the morning of February 20, 2025. (photo by Juan Manuel Benítez)

Participating journalists: Juan Manuel Benítez, Nicole Gelinas, Josh Greenman, Christina Greer, Alyssa Katz, Ben Max, Akash Mehta, Harry Siegel, Ben Smith, Liena Zagare.

Full Transcript

Congestion Pricing / Approach to Trump Administration

Akash Mehta
We are speaking to you at a rather turbulent time. It’s Thursday [February 20], and yesterday Donald Trump announced on Twitter that congestion pricing is dead, and you responded on Twitter that we need leadership that’s not afraid to stand up for us or stand up against Donald Trump. How would you do that as mayor to protect congestion pricing, but also more broadly?

Zellnor Myrie
Firstly, good morning, and thank you for doing this. I’m grateful that this is a service to New Yorkers in the wake of us not having as many opportunities…to do this. So thank you for what you do, and thank you for hosting this forum for us to communicate what our vision for the future of the city is.

The mayor of the city is uniquely positioned to marshal public support, not just for congestion pricing but for anything that matters to the city. We are in the media capital of the world. We are in the financial capital of the world. We are a global center of entertainment. Many of the most influential people live in this city. A mayor has the ability to get all of those things together, to speak in one voice on a whole host of issues, including congestion pricing. We have not seen that from this mayor. This mayor has been wholly absent from this conversation and it has been frustrating, frankly, that he has taken a back seat to this discussion that involves the lifeblood of our city. I’m someone that takes the subway every day. I’ve been commuting my whole life. I remember the first time I got on the bus, the B43 on Empire Boulevard. I was very young, had my uniform on, thought I was taking the bus by myself. Of course, my mom was driving behind the bus to make sure that I was OK.

But I say that to say that I am a commuter through and through. So I supported congestion pricing not just because of the reduction in traffic that it has already proven to be executing, but because of the well-needed resources to our public transportation system. We would not be the metropolis that we are without a thriving public transit system and the mayor of this city has a responsibility to have everyone come together and fight for that system and fight for a reduction in traffic. So there’s some logistical things that we can do. Of course, we can join legislation initiated by our attorney general, our corporation counsel, to prevent this what I believe to be illegal withdrawal of approval for congestion pricing but I think we have a bully pulpit that we have to use to shape public opinion, to help gather and rally the various stakeholders in this fight, and that’s what I’d be doing as mayor.

Alyssa Katz
You said legislation. You mean litigation.

Zellnor Myrie
Yeah, litigation. I’m sorry, litigation.

Qualifications

Ben Max
OK, let’s zoom out a little bit. We wanted to get your reaction to the latest big news, but broadly speaking, what would you say are two or three of the top qualifications for being mayor of New York City? And how do you meet them?

Zellnor Myrie
OK. Got to be a manager; got to have vision; got to be a coalition builder. Those are three big things.

We have a responsibility in the greatest city in the world to inform New Yorkers about where we want the city to go. One of the most unfortunate failures of this current administration has been a complete absence of vision for the city. We have no sense of direction — where we want to go, the big things that we want to achieve. So I think, at minimum, as the leader of the greatest city in the world, we should be clear about the goals that we have and where we want the city to go. Our management requires us to not be a micromanager for every single city operation. This is a workforce that is close to 300,000. We have close to 47 city agencies. There are about 10 to 12 people that I’m going to be talking to on a daily basis that are really going to be executing my vision, but it requires hiring the right people in those positions and trusting them to do the job and trusting them to execute what my vision is.

And I have to have some humility and curiosity about the city as I approach managing as well. You have to know when things are not working. You got to create the circumstances and environment for people to tell you, “Mr. Mayor, this is not working, and here’s the direction that we need to go in.” But I think it is really important that not only you manage, that you have a vision, but that you have the ability to build coalition. We have in our great metropolis, a thriving and necessary business community. We have a City Council, we have a legislature in Albany, we have federal partners, all of whom we need to work closely with in order to achieve the goals for this city. You cannot lead unless you are able to build coalition.

I’ve been really proud to be a coalition builder in the state legislature, and to do some things that people said could not be done. One of the things is the Clean Slate Act, where we brought all of those folks that I just mentioned — the business community, community advocates, labor, legislators — all together to achieve something to the betterment of most New Yorkers. So I think these are the things that are required of the next mayor, and I’m really excited to have the opportunity to do that.

Ben Max
Of those three things, obviously the biggest questions for you would be the first one, on management. What can you say to people who would be concerned that you’ve been an attorney, you’ve been a state legislator — where’s the management experience that might be, as you listed it, job number one for a mayor? How can people trust that you’re ready to take over management of the city?

Zellnor Myrie
I think that New Yorkers expect their mayor to surround themselves with the right individuals who aren’t just politically loyal, who aren’t just cronies, but who have demonstrated some subject matter expertise and who are willing to think outside of the box to solve some of our problems. I plan to hire the right people and entrust them to do the job. I think it’s really important to have a diversity of experience. There are public servants that I admire from previous administrations who brought that type of experience to the job, who I would be consulting with, and who I would surround myself with.

I think it’s also important that the culture from the top is one that encourages individuals to put the city first and to not advance their own ambition but to be about, “What can we do to make everyday New Yorkers lives better every single day?” I’ve done that as a state legislator. I’ve put my constituents first. I represent an incredibly diverse district with incredibly diverse demographics that have had different and disparate interests, but I have served all of those interests and have worked with all of them because I listen and because I do the hard work. I’m detail-oriented and I’m urgent about the needs of the day. That is the type of leadership and discernment that I think New Yorkers want. And let me also say this: We’ve had people with years of experience and they’ve gotten us exactly where we are today: a city that is unaffordable, a city that feels less safe, and these same characters are coming around and telling us, “I’m going to be the solution to your problems.” You’ve had the power, and you’ve done nothing. I think people are tired of that. They’re tired of the status quo.

Ben Max
Will you just quickly name one or two of those people of the past that you consult with? You said people of past administrations that you would consult with, or that you are consulting with, I didn’t quite catch how you phrased it, but can you name a couple people you’re looking at getting advice from or have looked to for advice?

Zellnor Myrie
So, not prepared to name folks publicly, but they span the administrations of the previous administration and the administration before that.

Federal Aid

Christina Greer
So you mentioned federal partners, and I think we can pretty much assume that we might see some budget cuts coming on the state and federal levels. Can you explain to New Yorkers how you’ll implement some of your plans for growth and expanded services, while both the city and individuals may see resources becoming a lot more scarce in the future?

Zellnor Myrie
We’re at a perilous time in the first 30 days of the Trump administration, because he has been executing on what he said he would but doing it at a speed at which I don’t think most people expected. Within the first two weeks of his administration, he proposed cuts to Medicaid, which would have an outsized impact here in the city for a couple of reasons. One, our safety net hospitals are reliant on Medicaid reimbursement. Some are almost solely reliant on this, and any threat to that source of funding has implications for the city. But we also get a chunk of our Medicaid funding from the state. About $19 billion of our city budget comes from the state. About $8 billion comes directly from the federal government. And these threats to our hospitals, threats to our schools, threats to our childcare centers, these have real implications for the city’s success.

So I think there are a couple of things that we have to do. One, we should work with this [Trump] administration when it is in the best interest of New York City, but we should stand up when they are attacking vulnerable New Yorkers and it is not in the best interest of this city. So I plan as the next mayor to be very clear with this Trump administration and with the subsequent administration that New Yorkers pay taxes, we give to the federal government. This is money that has already left the door. We expect to get that money back, and we expect to have the resources that we have put out. I think it’s also worth noting that should the administration follow through with some of the cuts that have been proposed, we’re going to have some tough decisions to make and that is going to require me to have some tough conversations with many of the stakeholders, including our business community, including labor, including my colleagues on the city, state and federal level.

But New Yorkers should be clear that the basic necessities: us having schools, hospitals, bridges and roads, housing — the things that are necessary for us to be successful — we will do everything within our power to ensure that those things are intact and that we protect ourselves from the federal government. We not only have direct assistance from the federal government by way of the $8 billion and some of the $19 billion that comes from the state, but there are billions that go to NYCHA, billions that go to our Health and Hospital system, our CUNY system. If you think about individuals in this city, Social Security. These are large amounts of money that we depend on the federal government for. I think New Yorkers are not going to stand for these cuts. I think people are going to be pretty upset when these cuts start hitting home and again, to the earlier question about what we should be doing in the face of a Trump administration, it’s going to be my responsibility to channel that anger to ensure that we’re all standing in unison and hopefully turning the tide so that the cuts can be reversed.

Government Leadership / Labor Relations / School Enrollment / Migrant Crisis

Ben Smith
If somebody’s thinking about taking a big executive job with ambiguous powers, do you have anything to learn from Trump in terms of just how hard he hit? You said, everybody was surprised by the level of shock and awe. I mean, obviously not on the substance, but would you kind of seek to imitate that velocity?

Zellnor Myrie
You know, here’s the thing, Trump is from New York, even though we don’t like to claim him, and I think there is a part of the New York DNA that is bold and that is clear-eyed on achieving what their vision is. I disagree almost 100% with Trump’s vision for this country and the city, but he has done the things that he said he would do and as mayor, I think New Yorkers expect me to do the same and to not attack our problems with small-scale solutions. This is New York City. Give me a break. When we say we want a mandate for 1 million homes? Yes, 1 million. That’s what we need to do to bring up the supply and bring down the demand. When we say we want to solve every shooting? Yes, every shooting, because that’s what New Yorkers expect. Let’s be bold. When we say we want to bring down crime, we want 50,000 more summer youth jobs. When we say we want after school for all? Yeah, for all — we can do those things. And he’s demonstrating that if you — the Constitution be damned — if you are focused enough you can start to execute on that vision, I think New Yorkers expect that same type of boldness and vigor from the next mayor.

Alyssa Katz
I want to follow up on that, because you know you had referenced labor unions as one group you’d be meeting with if we were facing budgetary pressures relating to the cuts in federal funding, and clearly getting things done anywhere close to a sort of MAGA-DOGE level will require fairly assertive work with labor unions. Tell us a little bit more about what that might look like, and on any particular problem you might be looking to solve.

Zellnor Myrie
I am the son of a public school teacher. My dad taught special education in the Bronx for close to 22 years. I would not have had health care if not for my dad’s UFT benefits. And so I have a deep and personal appreciation for labor and what they have stood for, what they have meant in my life personally particularly our workforce that allows for this city to run. We would not have that without a strong labor coalition, and I think they are just as invested in the health and success of the city as anyone else, because they overwhelmingly live in this city as well. I think there are opportunities to work together when we think about something like universal after school, that is going to require buy-in from labor, and going to require us to have discussions about what would look best in each school or each educational facility. And so that’s something that I would be discussing with them.

Alyssa Katz
OK, but that’s adding a program which, of course, labor would like. What about cuts, austerity? Not suggesting that you’re proposing an austerity regime, but that may be forced on you as you acknowledge. So how do you begin those kinds of hard conversations?

Zellnor Myrie
I don’t want to presuppose any negotiations or cuts or any of that. I think that is the worst case scenario where this federal administration is giving into their worst instincts. I think that conversation is not just going to happen with labor alone, that it will require a much broader conversation about how we can be most efficient with city dollars.

Josh Greenman
Have the city and state responded smartly to declining school enrollment, just to look back, because it relates: With fewer kids in the schools, should budgets be doing what they had been doing, or have we missed opportunities to smartly right-size school budgets to fewer students in those schools?

Zellnor Myrie
I think for a long time, our schools had not been getting the adequate funding. This is part of the reason that I ran for State Senate in 2018, was that we were not getting foundation aid to the amount that was required, we believed, by the [New York State] Constitution and by a Court of Appeals case. That formula is currently being discussed in Albany, and this is something the governor proposed last year. And I want to ensure that, whatever the outcome of that new foundation aid formula, that it does not disproportionately hurt the school districts like ours that need it the most, particularly for our students who are English Language Learners or are students with disabilities, I think that we had an opportunity with immigrants that were coming to the city, that helped with some of the enrollment, to not do what this administration has done and mismanaged what we saw over the last two years, but instead figure out how to work with this new population, how to integrate those students and those families into our education system.

Josh Greenman
Are you for holding schools harmless when they’re when their enrollment declines?

Zellnor Myrie
In New York City?

Josh Greenman
Yeah, their budgets. Should their budgets be basically held harmless when their enrollments decline?

Zellnor Myrie
Yes. Yes.

Nicole Gelinas
How might you have approached the migrant spending differently from how Mayor Adams approached it, starting with the shelters. Can the city afford to provide an open-ended shelter benefit? And whatever the answer to that, how would you have dealt with just the actual contracting?

Zellnor Myrie
I’ll start with where you ended, on the contracting. We saw, with no-bid contracts going to companies like DocGo, that there was no attention paid to the contract awardees’ ability to carry out the duties and to handle this constituency and this population. That is something that I would be examining, not just in the migrant context but more broadly, examining all of our no-bid contracts. Because I think the public would be surprised to know how much money, how much of their taxpayer money, we put out in that process.

We also saw this administration project one amount and the actual cost come out to be something else. And it wasn’t small. This was two to three billion dollars that this administration said they were expending, when that was not the case at all. I think that we have to be honest about our projections. We have to have the real experts in there give honest projections about how much we’re going to spend so that we can make our budget allocations accordingly. I think there was a lack of creativity in this administration dealing with migrants who were coming here. I proposed something called Work NYC, which was a New York City specific work permit that would put people to work. And people said, well, how are you going to do that? You know, the legal case is not too sound. And I would go back to Ben’s earlier point, that we’re New York City. When the administration was confronted with my potential solution to this problem, their response was, “No one else has done this.” You kidding me? This is New York City. We should do it, and we should lead on it.

Juan Manuel Benítez
When it came to contracts, do you think the comptroller [Brad Lander] didn’t do a good job?

Zellnor Myrie
I think ultimately that the comptroller has sign-off on our contracts, and to the extent that these were contracts that weren’t sound and that did not provide the correct return on investment for our city, I think that is something that we would put to the voters to examine.

Nicole Gelinas
And going back to your New York City-specific work permit, could you tell us exactly how that would work in terms of, if I’m a private sector employer, would I be worried that I’m violating federal immigration labor laws? If, on the other hand, these individuals would work for city government, what would they do? Would they be in unions, and how exactly would that work?

Zellnor Myrie
So my reading of the case law was that there would be some protection for private sector employees and some protection for even public sector employment. It’s not a slam dunk. I think it would have to be litigated, but I think at minimum it would have demonstrated that we were fighting for real solutions, and if the federal government was not going to assist us with what is inherently a federal problem, my argument would be, “OK, if you’re going to take us to court, than at least help us on the back end deal with this.” Again, when we have faced crises in the past, we have stepped up. We have been creative about our approaches. This would have been one of those approaches, and I don’t know whether or not the outcome would have been guaranteed, but we certainly would have employed, I think, a solution to this problem.

Ben Max
Very quickly on that, you wrote an op-ed calling for that in late 2023, I think. Did you do anything else beyond that to try to make this a reality?

Zellnor Myrie
There were a couple of bills that were introduced in the legislature that I was supportive of. They weren’t exactly what I proposed. They were statewide. They applied to temporary work permits for individuals seeking asylum. That did not gain traction in Albany, but it is something that I have talked about on the campaign trail, that I continue to talk about, and hopefully we can get to the right place.

Housing / Property Tax Reform

Alyssa Katz
I wanted to start digging a little more into your policy proposals, and particularly your housing plan. You said you’re going to build or preserve a million units. I’ve read it and you know, one thing that really conspicuously stood out to me was it doesn’t address property taxes at all, which are a major driver of housing costs. I mean, you can see this in the Rent Guidelines Board research and many other sources. So, and you’re in the state legislature which controls the city’s tax law. So I wanted to hear from you like sort of why that’s not in there, and what your thoughts are about property taxes and how you would approach them as mayor.

Zellnor Myrie
So our plan is focused, as you mentioned, on 1 million homes over the next decade, and in that, we include an expansion of our right to counsel to protect renters, but also to be extended to homeowners who are facing foreclosure and deed theft. It includes some upzoning, some commercial residential conversions, building in places that are already dense, building in industrial areas that can be converted to residential, and being creative about what we’re doing on our public housing sites. The focus of that plan was about increasing supply and, frankly, expanding our tax base. This is really, really, really important to the functioning of this city. If we have outmigration, if we lose our tax base, we cannot function, we cannot be successful. And that is why we have centered this, this plan in our campaign. Look, my administration is going to be open to conversations about how we fix some of the inequities in our property tax system. Some of that is up to the state, some of that the city can do on its own volition, and this is a conversation that we’re going to have.

Ben Smith
So I think you’re the YIMBYist of the candidates, and some of the plans, people who are excited about the kind of supply-side solutions love, particularly, giant new neighborhoods. Two questions on this: One, are you prepared for communities to absolutely hate you? You’re gonna have people who are furious at you, and there’s not gonna be coalitions you can build to fix that. And then second, how far would you take it, specifically? Would you expand Manhattan island by building land in the harbor, which is one proposal? And do you think New York should have the tallest building in the world — a hobby horse of mine, as you know?

Zellnor Myrie
In my own district — and for the readers, I represent the 20th Senate District, which has Central Brooklyn, essentially Prospect Park and every neighborhood around the park. I grew up on the east side of the park in Prospect Lefferts Gardens. I went to elementary and middle school in Crown Heights, also on the east side of the park. And the development on the east side of the park for the past 10 years has been close to something like 4,000 units. On the west side of the park, in Windsor Terrace, in the same period that number is closer to 300. So when there was a proposal for the Arrow Linen site to be developed, I was in support, and I supported it early, and many of the constituents did not like that. I got some very New York language emails, but I was prepared to stand my ground on that because the way that we’re going to solve the crisis is not by having one community shelter all of the development, but spreading the development to as many neighborhoods as we can.

Josh Greenman
How do you define the limits? Sorry to interrupt, but there was a big fight about a tower next to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, and many people said, “OK, well, maybe not right there.” What is your “maybe not right there”? And then get back to Ben’s question. But like, how do you not back every single highrise in every single place?

Zellnor Myrie
Well, look, I think this is going to be the subject of a lot of conversations with the Department of City Planning, with HPD. I think it’s important that we have a citywide approach to this, so that no one feels particularly singled out, but that we are consistent in how we are applying development throughout the city. Our plan doesn’t call for the same type of development everywhere—

Josh Greenman
But were you for that tower, for instance, next to the Botanic Garden?

Zellnor Myrie
I’m happy with how it came out, and I supported what the outcome was. And I’m someone that grew up a couple of blocks from there and have gone to the garden since I was very young, and I think that it’s important to have development: there, in Windsor Terrace and throughout our city. I think that this notion that only certain communities can build and allow for an increased supply is one that we have to reject, and I’m prepared to have certain communities dislike me. This may seem counterintuitive, as someone that is counting on people to like me to get the job, but once I get the job, my duty is to do the job, not to be liked. And that may not sit well with everybody, but there are families that are leaving the city because they can’t afford to stay here. There are young professionals that are choosing to start their careers somewhere else because they cannot afford to stay here. If we do not have the courage to stand up in this moment, the city is going to look completely different than what we know it to be. And so yes, I’m prepared to get some of that. I’m under no illusions that this is going to be an easy process, but nothing that’s worth it is easy.

Nicole Gelinas
If you were mayor right now, would you go ahead with the Elizabeth Street Garden development project?

Zellnor Myrie
I would, and I think it is, frankly, a shame that it took this long to build 143 units, I think it is, of affordable housing and to create public space. And so I would be supportive.

Josh Greenman
How about tallest building and expanding Manhattan?

Zellnor Myrie
Oh, yes. So yes, we should have the tallest building. I think that we shouldn’t be beat by Dubai, and I think this is something New Yorkers might get excited about. I think that this, in line with us trying to be bold and providing more supply for our housing crisis, I also think New Yorkers just like to be inspired. And I think this could be one of those things. On the expansion of Manhattan island, I confess to not knowing what the climate implications for that would be, and so I’d be interested to learn what that is, but I think that everything should be on the table. We got to get creative to get out of this housing crisis.

Christina Greer
I just have a quick follow-up on that one, though, on the building of the units, because we know that some communities are not ever used to not getting their way. I mean, there’s a racial component, there’s a class component to that. There’s some communities that have always had to absorb changes, and then there are others that just won’t do it. I mean, they will fight you tooth and nail, especially when you start talking about buildings that will have not just wealthy people, they will actually allow young people, my students, to be able to stay in the city in some sort of affordable-type housing. You might also be working with a Republican governor, that is a possibility, and a Republican president. So how, how does this happen with neighborhoods fighting it? Because part of the reason why Eric Adams has sort of been OK is because he doesn’t bother rich people, right? De Blasio had a lot of ire because he actually tried to get rich people to leave their comfort zone in education and housing. So how does this work?

Zellnor Myrie
Well, part of the reason that we are centering housing in our campaign is to create a political mandate for it when we win. It is going to be important for me to go into communities and to say, “this is what I was elected to do. I was elected to address this housing crisis.” And yes, that includes development. And again, part of our plan is to develop in places that are already dense and places that don’t have development. But we’re going to have some challenges in some neighborhoods where people don’t want to see that, and we’re going to have to fight for it. I’m going to be centering people like your students, people that want to stay and live in this city. We cannot survive as a city if it is only affordable for the very wealthy or if it is only housing that is supported by government subsidy. What has made this city magical, in many ways, is that if you wanted to be a teacher, a social worker, an artist, an entertainer, a lawyer, a small businessperson or anything else, that you could find a place to live. It’s what attracted my parents to come to this country: that my dad could make more as a minimum-wage factory worker in Brooklyn than he could back home in Costa Rica.

Josh Greenman
Are there aggressive things we should be doing to bring down the cost of construction?

Zellnor Myrie
Yes, part of this is due to some things out of the city’s control. We anticipated that the interest rates would be lower than what they are now. That, of course, increases everything in the construction costs.

Josh Greenman
What about the Scaffold Law at the state level, for instance?

Zellnor Myrie
I support the Scaffold Law. I think that it is important for us to be protecting worker safety. And what we have seen absent the scaffolding law was an environment where workers were being badly maimed or in most tragic instances, killed, without any responsibility given to those on the sites that they were working. But I do think that there are opportunities for us to utilize our Housing Development Corporation [HDC] to help bring down some of these costs. I don’t think that we have unleashed the HDC to its full potential. I think there are some conversations that we can and should be having with our partners in government on the federal level, to help with some subsidizing of construction costs. This is something that should appeal even to a Republican administration that has at least on paper said that building more housing is something that they would be open to.

Josh Greenman
Last thing here: Should all affordable housing be done with union labor?

Zellnor Myrie
Yes.

Immigration Enforcement

Juan Manuel Benítez
And all this construction, how is it going to work, given how the Trump administration is aggressively targeting undocumented immigrants for deportation, given that a large or significant number of construction workers are undocumented immigrants? How are you going to put those two things together?

Zellnor Myrie
Well, you know, we are in an unfortunate and tragic environment where our mayor is compromised and is being pushed to enforce federal immigration policy in an unprecedented way, in a way that is not borne out of policy allegiance but borne out of a directive from the Department of Justice, and in a way that would absolve him of legal responsibility for wholly unrelated issues. I think we have to be clear about what our sanctuary laws say, and what they allow and what they don’t allow, and for civil purposes, we have no obligation to be working with the federal government on this issue. The New York Police Department has said so itself, but that is what the laws dictate as well. So as it relates to construction, I would be doing the best that I can as mayor to protect New Yorkers, as we have done under many, many mayors, starting from Ed Koch.

Juan Manuel Benítez
How would you do that? I mean, how are you going to stop immigration agents from going into a construction site and trying to arrest and deport a bunch of construction workers? How are you going to stop the federal government from coming in here and doing the job that they think the voters of the country gave them to do?

Zellnor Myrie
Well, look, the federal government as it stands now has access to public spaces, and they can carry out enforcement actions. That is something that we do not have legal grounds to prevent from happening. And that is unfortunate, but that is what the reality is. But to the extent that they would require cooperation or try to coerce cooperation, that’s where the line is drawn and where we would not be going beyond what the Constitution requires of us.

Building Big Things / Development Politics

Akash Mehta
Senator, I want to return just for a moment to this theme of building big things. Your housing plan is called Rebuild New York. You want to build the tallest building in the world. You talk often about how New York built the Empire State Building in 13 months. It seems like the state and the city’s capacity to build big, ambitious things — its boldness, as you say — has atrophied. New York once was the place that built the biggest and the best public housing system, public transit system, public hospital system, public welfare system in the country. And now we spend decades arguing about tolling the program and spend $2.5 billion per mile for the subway. It seems like if you want to reverse that trend, that goes beyond reversing decisions made in any one administration, and it requires a real understanding of what that multi-decade trend was, was caused by. So what is your sort-of overall narrative of the decline in New York’s ambition and boldness?

Zellnor Myrie
Well, I think in part, we have not had the right leadership. What we have seen is, unfortunately, a lack of ambition on this front and political courage to take on some of the really tough issues, like ensuring that we can build in a way that meets the demand. We used to be able to do big things. We used to create 70,000 units a year. That used to not be a remarkable stat to cite. But I think over the years, I mean, not wholly, but in part because we became less ambitious, we were not able to achieve those things. I also think that we have seen, frankly, a frustration with the lack of generational change in leadership. Those who have been impacted most by a lot of these policies have often not had the opportunity to lead, and that is part of why we are running, why I’m running for mayor in this moment, because I’m living the experience that most New Yorkers are experiencing. I’m a proud public school kid. I was able to work at one of the best law firms in the world, here in this city. I’m a state senator, but the path to homeownership for me in this city feels very bleak. The average cost of a home is close to $900,000. The average rent is close to $4,000. This is not sustainable, and if we do not change course in this moment, then we are going to continue to see this atrophy. We’re going to continue to see this lack of ambition.

So I think it’s really important that we start with the vision, and that is why I have been bold in my vision. That is why I have proposed the solutions that we put forth, both in our housing plan, our public safety plan, and how we talk about this city. I can’t speak for other leaders. I can’t speak for why they didn’t step up, why they didn’t say “this is the moment,” but I can speak for who I am, what my generation wants and what the city needs at this moment, and that is a bold vision that is not afraid to take some tough stances, that’s not afraid to take some arrows, that’s not afraid to get beat up by some communities if it is in the betterment of the city. If we do not improve our quality of life, if we do not have a city that doesn’t just feel safe, but is safe, if we do not provide relief for working families, our tax base will erode. Our population will continue to migrate out, and this decline that you were mentioning will continue, and will do so precipitously, and that’s why I think in this moment, we need more ambition.

Liena Zagare
Do you think there may be such a thing as too much community consultation and too much regulation in the city, and would you seek to change any of that?

Zellnor Myrie
As it relates to what exactly?

Liena Zagare
Development and management.

Zellnor Myrie
So, I think it’s important to work with communities in development, but I don’t think that there should be the ability for communities to refuse development outright and to force other communities to shoulder that development. I think that’s why it’s important to have a citywide approach to housing, to zoning, to development. That, I think, encourages every community to do its fair share.

Josh Greenman
How do you do that with so many historic districts, for instance, locking in lower scale housing in many parts of the city?

Zellnor Myrie
Well, I think the tides are beginning to change on this, as we just saw with Arrow Linen, as we’ve seen with some of the other developments. I think there is a growing realization that more people are going to have to do their fair share on this. And frankly, it is why I’m centering this housing plan in my campaign, because I plan to be very aggressive in ensuring that we have the appropriate and adequate supply.

Alyssa Katz
But just to be clear, landmarking is the permanent state, it would have to be undone through the Landmarks Preservation Commission. So I think the specific question is, what do you do about vast areas of the city — Park Slope, Greenwich Village, many others — where landmarking locks in place the scale of the housing that’s there?

Zellnor Myrie
Well, I don’t think that the — I think there are many opportunities for us to build outside of the landmark neighborhoods, and I don’t think that it would require a wholesale repeal of landmark neighborhoods. I think there are many opportunities for us as we lay out and rebuild New York City to meet the unit creation and preservation demand to help abate the crisis.

Public Safety and Order / Serious Mental Illness / Police Accountability

Nicole Gelinas
On public safety and quality of life. Although the mayor is obviously deeply unpopular, the public agrees with some of his specific policies, including the new NYPD focus on quality-of-life infractions, involuntary commitment and/or other treatment of the severely mentally ill who are on the streets, in subways, and working with immigration officials on violent criminals. Could you tell us on those three specific things, where do you fall on those issues?

Zellnor Myrie
I’m going to try to recall all three, and might just come back to you to ask for a reminder. And I’ll start on the last one, on cooperation with federal immigration officials—

Nicole Gelinas
Just on violent criminals, just on convicted criminals.

Zellnor Myrie
Right, on violent criminals. I think most New Yorkers want anyone convicted of a violent crime to be held accountable and to go through our justice system. I don’t think that’s controversial. I think what has been controversial is that this administration, the federal administration, has at times gone beyond that. And that is something that offends our current laws.

And so I am for cooperation with our federal government to hold violent criminals accountable, to ensure that anyone that is breaking our criminal statutes goes through the system, and, you know, and has due process, but is held accountable. That to me, should be uncontroversial. Our laws, our current laws, allow for that. They allow for that type of cooperation.

NYPD gang unit, for instance, they’re going to conduct investigations on violent crime, on gang involvement, regardless of anyone’s immigration status. What they cannot do is use immigration status, in and of itself, as a means for targeting an investigation. We do not allow for that in our laws. We do not allow for civil enforcement from our law enforcement, and that, to me, is the line. It is a nuanced line, but a very important one that I care deeply about, not just as a New Yorker, but as a lawyer.

Nicole Gelinas
So, if I’m convicted of felony assault, I should be subject to deportation? If I live here 20 years, if I may have been here since I was a child, but I could be deported if I don’t have legal status?

Zellnor Myrie:
Yes.

Josh Greenman
After prison time or before?

Zellnor Myrie
I think the current law is that it’s after, yeah, I think that’s right. So that’s what I support.

Nicole Gelinas
And approach to quality life issues: You know, people are not upset just about violent crime, they’re upset about open-air drug use, aggressive panhandling, things like that. How would you approach those issues?

Zellnor Myrie
Yeah, so I’m born and raised in the city. I take public transportation nearly every single day, and I’m proud of that. But the truth is that things feel different than they were in the past. Our major crimes are up from 2019 close to 30%, murders are up 20% from 2019, felony assaults are up 42% I believe, from 2019, and so by every objective measure we are less safe than we were five years ago. It’s why I proposed in my public safety plan a return to our police headcount, to where it was pre-pandemic.

It is important that we have police officers to help with some of these quality of life issues. But also that they’re smartly deployed. I think New Yorkers are frustrated at times when they are in our subways or in our streets and they see our officers bunched up and not in our subway cars, or not talking and walking in the community. I think it’s important that we also solve crime. That in itself, of itself, is a deterrent, which is why we have proposed “Clear 100” to solve every shooting.

I think it’s also important that we deal with New Yorkers that are suffering on our streets and suffering in our subways, posing a threat to themselves and to others, and it’s why we have proposed police and clinician teams that would be 24/7 in our subways, to help these individuals get the help that they need, but also to keep the public safe. If we do not have a city that feels safe when you’re on your way to work, when you’re on your way back, we’re going to continue to see outmigration. We’re going to continue to see people choose other destinations. This has to be a place where you can feel safe, to raise your family, where you can have some confidence, like my mom did, that ultimately I can get on the train to go to school and that I will come back home in one piece.

Josh Greenman
Should the NYPD keep its gang database?

Zellnor Myrie
Yes.

Nicole Gelinas
And can your clinician teams, similar to the SCOUT teams, do you think they can work under current state law, or do you support the governor’s and the mayor’s approach to expand the commitment law for people who don’t recognize their own needs?

Zellnor Myrie
Yes. I think that these are all in all of the acronyms. They have been all well intentioned, and I think that they are speaking to a need that says we need both law enforcement but [also] medical professionals to help get individuals the help that they need.

Part of the problem, to me, has been mismanagement, because the teams are too disparate. The agencies with jurisdiction over this issue don’t come together and speak to each other. We have the Department of Health. We have Health and Hospitals. We have CBOs, we have private providers, we have specialty units, all of whom have some piece of the mental health ecosystem, but none of whom can take sole jurisdiction, or who report to one deputy mayor with clear direction to say, OK, so how many chronically ill, mentally ill people did we put in permanent housing? What are the statistics here? What are we doing on AOTs [Assisted Outpatient Treatment orders]? How are we taking the number down from 3,000 to 2,999? That’s something that I want to do as mayor, to consolidate that responsibility, so that we have one line of accountability and some real leadership.

Nicole Gelinas
So, better management under existing state law is what you’re saying, you don’t need an immediate change?

Zellnor Myrie
So let me, sorry, let me address that too. I support the intent of the governor’s expansion as well. I think that it’s important for us to use all of the tools at our disposal to keep our public spaces safe, and that includes getting the individual the help that they need.

What happens after that involuntary commitment, to me, is just as important as removing them from the public space. If we are sending that individual to Rikers where they’re going to get worse, or we’re sending them to the emergency room where they’re going to cycle right back out, that is unhelpful on both counts. And so I think it’s important that we actually get them on a path to recovery. Part of that we proposed—

Josh Greenman
It sounded like there was a little wiggle room. You said, I support the intent of the governor. There’s a bill on the table. I don’t think the governor has necessarily supported that bill, per se. Are you on that bill? Do you want that bill to actually pass?

Zellnor Myrie
I don’t think I’m on that bill. I think you’re referencing the [Sen. Jessica] Scarcella-Spanton bill—

Josh Greenman
The Supportive Interventions Act.

Zellnor Myrie
Yeah, I think that’s—

Josh Greenman
So are you [sponsoring] that?

Ben Max
It was a [then-Senator Diane] Savino bill, I think [Scarcella-Spanton’s] carried it forward.

Zellnor Myrie
So, I’m not on that bill.

Josh Greenman
Why not?

Zellnor Myrie
Because I think that we have…The details matter. I think it’s important for us to work through the legislation to ensure that we are doing more good than harm. And I think the governor’s proposal is a good one, but we are actively working hard—

Josh Greenman
What are your concerns? Do you have your own vision of how to do it?

Zellnor Myrie
I think it’s important for us. I think there are circumstances where individuals have to be involuntarily removed from our public spaces, and I think that the criteria for that has not allowed for clinicians to take into account this individual’s history. I think that the threshold for some of that involuntary commitment at times has been too high, but I think it’s important for us to discuss what the parameters and the details of that are, and we’re actively doing that now.

Harry Siegel
So, in 2020, you said, quote, “police brutality is in the DNA of this country, and if we do not start the conversation from there, we’ll not engage with you.” And you introduced a bill in Albany to strip police officers of qualified immunity. This year, your public safety plan calls on the NYPD to hire 3,000 more police officers. And you said, “on balance, we know that if we have more police officers, with some other things, we do have more safety.” So can you explain how those align, and if you still support stripping police officers of qualified immunity?

Zellnor Myrie
So, I think New Yorkers can hold two truths together at the same time. One, that police officers are a necessary component for public safety. My mom is one of those New Yorkers. She was robbed at gunpoint with me in the elevator when I was young. When she sees police officers, she feels more safe. Her son was also pepper sprayed, as all of you know, and she doesn’t want that either.

And I think most New Yorkers want to see a well run, robust but accountable police department. Those things may have some tension, but they’re not at odds with each other. An accountable police department is good for public safety. It gives the community trust. They can engage. They can be in that process if they know that when people step over the line they will be held accountable. It’s why, in my public safety plan, I don’t just propose an increase in headcount, but that we increase the resources for the Civilian Complaint Review Board. That we state, if there are repeated, substantiated complaints against an officer, that we consider removal.

Harry Siegel
But you think officers should be personally held accountable in some instances, as opposed to just the department?

Zellnor Myrie
Yes, I do. And we spend a lot of money in police settlements. That, I think if we could, on the front end, have more accountability and change of culture, that would not be an expenditure that the city would have to give out. And again, I think it’s important — most police officers put on their uniform every single day. They leave their families. They don’t know if they’re going to return home, and they do it because they want to keep people safe. They want to be able to do that job. We can do both of those things. Have them do their job, support them when they’re doing their job, and if they step out of line, hold them accountable.

Alyssa Katz
How do you recruit in that environment? I mean, you’re saying you want to expand the NYPD. One reason the force is down is that we’ve seen a lot of retirements, and also other jurisdictions are hiring them, both in the region and nationally. You want the trust of New Yorkers, what about the trust of people you’re asking to become police officers at fairly low entry pay? How do you tell them that you have their back?

Zellnor Myrie
Yeah, look, I think that a lot of police officers, like most New Yorkers, want some of the same things. They want to be in a city that they can afford, and they want to have high quality of life. Unfortunately, the current state of the force is such that you walk into the precinct in the morning thinking that you’re going to have an eight-hour shift, and that ends up being a 15-hour shift. You have to do overtime to cover for the lack of other personnel. How you’re showing up on hour 12, 13, 14, 15, you’re not going to be your best self. So it really is imperative that we do recruitment and retention.

I think we have to think about where we’re doing recruitment. The police force looks different today than it did when I was a child. There are a lot more people that look like me on the police force, and that, to me, I think should continue. I think that we have to do recruiting in areas and neighborhoods that we have not done recruiting, and we have to talk about what pay and benefits and those things look like, because you’re right. People are looking to other jurisdictions where they can get a higher quality of life and they can get better pay. And I’m going to have to make the pitch as the next mayor that we need you. We need you to help make the city what it is and what it once was.

Juan Manuel Benítez
Who was the best police commissioner of your lifetime?

Zellnor Myrie
That’s a great question. [Pause]

Josh Greenman
And if you pick a Bratton, you have to say which Bratton.

Zellnor Myrie
So, I was gonna say Bratton, and I’d say de Blasio [era] Bratton.

Ben Smith
And Jessica Tisch has a shot?

Zellnor Myrie
I’ve been impressed with what I’ve seen over the past couple of months. I think she’s taken some really important steps, and she is the type of commissioner, and not just the police commissioner, but the type of senior-level official that I would want in my administration. Someone that I can trust and can give agency to do the job, someone who can execute my vision, and someone who feels most responsible to the betterment of the city.

Ben Max
Harry had a follow-up.

Eric Adams Corruption Case

Harry Siegel
You said that the judge should appoint a special prosecutor in Trump’s case. We had this hearing yesterday. We don’t know if that will happen yet, but I assure you, by the time this transcript is out, the judge will not have done what you called for. Governor Kathy Hochul said she’s considering things and convened people. This was feeble and performative. Al Sharpton announced in the middle of it she wouldn’t be doing anything until the judge is done. Jerry Goldfeder wrote a piece for The Daily News asking about why the legislature can’t act and call a recall election. So I’m interested, as somebody who’s both running for mayor and a lawmaker, what you think of that idea and what you’re calling for right now?

Zellnor Myrie
I called for the mayor’s resignation shortly after the indictments came out a few months ago, that still holds true for me. I think the power of removal is an extraordinary one. It is one that should not be exercised lightly. It is one that I think you should be thoughtful and deliberate about. And I think that’s what the governor is doing, and I defer to her judgment on that.

What we are witnessing out of City Hall should shock the conscience of any New Yorker, because whether you agree with this mayor’s politics or not, whether you agree with Donald Trump’s politics or not, the sovereignty of New York City has been compromised. We have not seen something like this in our lifetimes, where the Department of Justice can tell an individual that is responsible for 8 million people that you need to carry out our policies or face imprisonment. Those are the choices.

Harry Siegel
But if the government doesn’t act, you don’t think the legislature should, to get this to the voters. We should just have an election.

Zellnor Myrie
I haven’t read the proposal, and I don’t think that we have instituted recall elections under other circumstances, but I’d be interested in reading more.

Josh Greenman
I’ve seen a lot of people take umbrage about the fact that, you know, Trump now has something over Adams. What does that mean in practical terms? Can you give examples of the position this could put the city in?

Zellnor Myrie
We had $80 million clawed back from our bank account just last week, I believe, at the behest not of any elected official but at the behest of Elon Musk. That is money that the city could be using, that we cannot use now because of those actions. The mayor waking up every single day with a memo that says your dismissal…again, to Harry’s point, it’s still being discussed in the court...but that your dismissal of charges without prejudice and can be brought back at any time, forces him to make decisions not based on what is in the best interest of New Yorkers.

So if a proposed cut to our schools, and this is not hyperbole, the Trump administration has openly talked about dismantling the Department of Education, we get $2 billion from the Department of Education in this city. When you are faced with those choices of whether you will acquiesce or whether you will fight for the city you were elected to represent — New Yorkers, I think, are right to question what decision you’re going to make for our schools.

I spoke earlier about the threats to our Medicaid reimbursement system. I represent a number of safety net hospitals. I was born in a safety net hospital in Crown Heights. I fought to save a safety net hospital, the only state run hospital in the city, SUNY Downstate, that depends almost exclusively on Medicaid reimbursement. And the shutting down of that system, the threats of cuts to that system, have real-world implications for those hospitals and the type of services that they would provide. So this isn’t just politics. These are real-life impacts. These are things that can hurt New Yorkers, particularly vulnerable New Yorkers, and that’s why it is imperative that we have a mayor that’s willing to stand up.

Education

Ben Smith
We haven’t talked about education at all.

Liena Zagare
Speaking of education. Do you think that the city’s Department of Education should remain under mayoral control, and how would you ensure that the kids who start kindergarten would read at third grade level by the time your first term is over?

Zellnor Myrie
I support mayoral control. I’m running for mayor. I want to have control over the schools. I think New Yorkers expect one line of accountability and leadership. I want them to be able to come and yell at me on the street and say, “you’re doing a terrible job at this” or to be able to tell me, “Z, we want you to do more, but you’re doing great.” They need to have a single point of accountability for that, so I support mayoral control.

One of the things that I think has been a good step in this current administration is the NYC Reads initiative, which has focused on increasing our literacy rates, certainly up until the third grade, because we know what the research tells us about folks who have, students who have fallen behind on literacy by the third grade — the implications that it has, particularly for Black students, for ELL students, for students with disabilities. That they are much, much, much, more likely to drop out of school if they are not reading proficient by the third grade.

I would like to continue that we have heard from some surveys that the teachers, by and large, support the NYC Reads initiative that focuses on evidence-based curriculum. They need some more support, and that is something that I’d be doing in my first administration. You do not get this type of training before you become a teacher, and so I think the city has to do a better job of supporting teachers to teach this type of curriculum.

This current chancellor, I think, has had more flexibility than the previous ones on giving teachers a little bit more autonomy on how to execute that curriculum, but this is something that I’d really like to focus on. Like, I spent many afternoons in the central library on Flatbush Avenue because my mom said that is where you’re going to go. This is a safe place where you can do your homework, but also where you can read books. And I would not be who I am today if not for that type of focus.

Liena Zagare
So you’ll continue with the current administration’s initiatives, rather than introduce your own?

Zellnor Myrie
On this specifically, I think NYC Reads is a good program that we should invest more in.

Josh Greenman
You’re graduate of Brooklyn Tech. You’re also a Black man. I’m going to give you three options. You keep the single-test, SHSAT admissions system; you keep the test, but add additional factors for admissions; or you dump the test. Which of those three do you back?

Zellnor Myrie
So you mentioned that I’m a Black man. Yes, I’m also the son of two Costa Rican immigrants, and so I come at this not just as a Black New Yorker, but a product of an immigrant family that did not have the resources for test prep. In fact, the only reason that I got into Brooklyn Tech was my seventh-grade math teacher scrapped the curriculum and told the entire class that we are going to do preparation for this test. You are no less capable than anyone else to be successful here, you just need the help and the assistance. I believe in that. I was a goofball in middle school. I was a class clown. I was going through puberty. I was trying to impress girls, so my grades were terrible. If there was something outside of the test, I’m not sure that I would have been successful, that the test is what allowed me to get into Brooklyn Tech, but I was only able to do that because I had the right preparation. So I am open to having conversations about how we improve diversity in this, in the schools, and we certainly should not have one single test be the path to success for any individual student, but that test is what changed the course.

Josh Greenman
But I’ve got to pin you down: So it should not be based on one test, or it’s fine to have admissions based only on a single test?

Zellnor Myrie
I think that we should be open to figuring out something additional to the test. But I also think that the way the pitch of this conversation has been such that, as you have presented it, that the current admission process is something that is, that cannot be a path to success for New Yorkers of color, and that just not has not been my experience.

Josh Greenman
What other metrics would you want to build into the admission system to complement the test?

Zellnor Myrie
I think I’d be open to conversations on what that would look like. I know that there has been a task force and conversations about considering middle school grades and percentages of students from a host of schools and so that’s, again, a conversation we can have. But had there been additional metrics, I’m not sure I would have gotten into Brooklyn Tech.

More NYPD Commissioner

Nicole Gelinas
On your [police] commissioner, you mentioned the example of Bratton. Bratton never served as a uniformed NYPD officer. He came to us as an outsider, at 40 [years old], the first time. On the other hand, Mayor Adams has preferred uniformed NYPD experience. What would you want? Would you want your commissioner to have worked up through the ranks of the NYPD? Would you want them to be a civilian like Tisch? Would you want them to be an outsider? You know, what are you looking for in terms of that experience?

Zellnor Myrie
I think the commissioner has to be someone that is respected by the police force. And as you mentioned, sometimes that respect is earned simply because they have served, and other times that respect is earned because they have demonstrated leadership and ability to change culture and to execute the vision of the mayor. That’s going to be the most important quality for me. Someone that has the capability, has the integrity, and the demonstrated leadership to take on one of the most important public safety jobs in the entire country.

‘Young Man in a Hurry’?

Juan Manuel Benítez
Senator, last week, we asked Jim Walden, the independent candidate for mayor, about who he thought was the most impressive [Democratic] candidate for mayor. He named you, but at the same time he said, he basically said you’re too young and that you have a future, and maybe you should be waiting, it’s too early for you to run for mayor or to be mayor. What do you have to say to that?

Zellnor Myrie
So I would say to any New Yorker that has those concerns that I have demonstrated over the past seven years in the state legislature that I am up to the job and I’m serious about my job. I have passed first-in-the-nation legislation — whether that was gun safety, whether that has been on voting rights, whether that has been on housing, whether it’s been on consumer protection — in a place where it is hard to do big things. Up in Albany, I’m a born-and-raised New Yorker. My story is not possible without this city. I don’t speak about these issues from an ivory tower. I’m talking about these issues from the 5 train. This is my life. This is who I am. Every day I still have student loans. I just got married. I’m trying to put down roots in the neighborhood where I went to elementary school. What is more New York City than being the son of two immigrants that worked in factories and now their son is running for mayor?

Clean Slate Act

Josh Greenman
Can I talk to you about Clean Slate for a second? Because you just mentioned you wrote it, your legislative record. If I own an apartment and am trying to rent it out, or I have a small business that I’m trying to hire for, how do you think about my rights to find out whether the person who I’m going to hire or I’m going to rent to might have a criminal record? How should we think about that question?

Zellnor Myrie
On the hiring front, what we have in Clean Slate, and this went with many conversations with the business community. We had the support of the Partnership for New York City. We had the support of the Business Council of New York, JPMorgan, Microsoft, Verizon, Fortune 500 companies. And the reason, I think they were supportive was that they believed rightly that individuals who have already paid their dues and who have remained out of trouble make for the best employees. They are the people you want to hire. They are the folks that you want involved in helping to make your company great. We would not have garnered that support if that did not exist. And there are also provisions in the Clean Slate law that for particular industries that might have sensitivities, specifically those that require fingerprinting, that they would still have access to these records, and that they would still be able to make decisions based on what they see in that access.

Josh Greenman
What confuses me is I could Google as a prospective employer, as a person who’s renting an apartment out, and find out that the person was arrested, but I might not be able to get the official disposition of the case beyond that, but that Googling that leads to knowledge of the arrest might actually change my decision.

Zellnor Myrie
[No response]

Josh Greenman
OK.

Ben Smith
I think Senator Myrie can be here till 10. I’m not sure everybody here can. So if anybody does need to slip away, please do, and we’re starting to run a little short on time.

Favorite Governor / State of the Race / Big Ideas / Rank the Mayors

Nicole Gelinas
Who’s your favorite governor—

Zellnor Myrie
Of all time?

Nicole Gelinas
Since you were born?

Ben Smith
And is it Andrew Cuomo?

Zellnor Myrie
All right, hold on here while I think through this. I guess I would have, yeah, I probably have to say the first Cuomo [Mario]. I think he was able to capture what made New York special, an immigrant story, the ability to use government to do big things.

Josh Greenman
Like what?

Zellnor Myrie
Well his fight, I think, on housing, on providing fair housing, I think, was something that spoke to a lot of New Yorkers, particularly in the communities that I represent. I think he took some tough stances at the time, like standing up against the death penalty. That may seem sort-of normal and innocuous now, but that took some courage to have back then.

Ben Smith
I have a political question just about this moment. There’s a number of Black elected and Black community leaders — some wrote in the last couple of days to say that Adams shouldn’t be removed, and that that would be an affront to the community. I think there’s sort-of an overlapping group who seem to be shopping for another mayoral candidate, ideally connected to Brooklyn, the Brooklyn Democratic organization, who is Black and not you. How do you take the notion that there’s something racist about removing Adams, A, and B, why aren’t you the candidate of a Black establishment that’s kind of frantically looking around for an alternative?

Zellnor Myrie
So I think, like many Black New Yorkers, watching the mayor on Fox and Friends, for instance, was a painful experience, not just because it reflected this acquiescence to a federal government under some very questionable circumstances, but because you never want to see a Black man be subjected to this type of perceived control regardless of how you feel about him. So I get the sensitivities that people have to fellow Black electeds, Black New Yorkers have in taking unusual steps to remove the second Black mayor. But I’d argue that the premise of the second part of the question — why we aren’t the Black candidate of the Black establishment — I don’t think that’s true.

I think that one, it is early still. Two, I think the Black electorate is very diverse. I think there is a generational component. I think that there are many Black New Yorkers and Black leaders who are tired of the past and who are excited about what our candidacy means for Black leadership and the legacy of Black leadership in this city. Watching what has happened with the current mayor has been disappointing, because we all wanted him to succeed once he got it. His success was the city’s success — the second Black mayor. So no one is taking joy in what we’re witnessing now. And the implications that this has for Black leadership in this city and in this country, to me, are profound. I think we present the right alternative in this moment, a Black elected official, born and raised in this city, who also has the immigrant experience, who has fought for issues that Black New Yorkers care about, and who has demonstrated an ability to be serious about the job. That’s what I think we want the legacy of Black leadership to be, and that’s what I’m trying to represent.

Ben Smith
You got your seat beating someone who’s since been kind-of swept into the Adams investigations. How should people understand your relationship with what’s left of the machine there?

Zellnor Myrie
I ran for State Senate in 2018 as a long shot. A lot of people said we couldn’t win because we were going up against the Adams machine, because we were going up against, at the time, the Brooklyn Democratic Party. And I didn’t run because of what the odds were, I ran because Albany wasn’t working for my community, and I wanted to step up and provide a different option for the community. And we won, in a majority Black district, because we successfully made the case that we could provide the type of leadership that they needed. We’re at a similar juncture now. Some people think that this is a risk and that this is a long shot and that we can’t beat the machine. I reject that notion. We’re at a different time, and we have stepped up in the past, we’re stepping up again, and this time we’re going to get it.

Josh Greenman
Very important question: You’re a sneakerhead. How many pairs do you own, and where do you keep them?

Zellnor Myrie
OK, so this answer is subject to some confidentiality, because sneakerheads generally don’t give a number. You know, if somebody’s a real sneakerhead they don’t give out the actual number.

Juan Manuel Benítez
Because they don’t know?

Zellnor Myrie
I’m just going to leave it there.

Ben Max
Because it’s too high.

Zellnor Myrie
I’m not going to say how many — but I will say that I do have storage space for sneakers.

Ben Max
You talked about big ideas and vision, and so you’ve got a ‘mandate for a million homes,’ you’ve got clear all the shootings, you’ve got universal afterschool. What’s something — not to get out ahead of your campaign announcements, but what’s something else that you’re either considering or you plan to roll out in more detailed fashion, or something you’ve seen around the country or the world, what’s another big idea that you really love that you may or may not propose in this campaign, but what’s exciting about the future that you are thinking about or want to roll out at some point or consider?

Zellnor Myrie
You’re right, Ben, I don’t want to get ahead of our campaign and looking at my comms staff here, and they’re giving me the evil eye to ensure that I don’t get ahead of things. But I actually think there’s some small things that would make an outsized difference, that are not necessarily life or death, but that might resonate with New Yorkers. For instance — when you’re on the train, isn’t it incredibly frustrating when you cannot hear the announcement clearly? Like you’re just losing your mind because you’re trying to figure out what’s going on. You may or may not have cellphone service and they’re announcing and it’s like coming through a muffled thing. I’d like to clear up some of the audio on our subway systems. That’s not world-changing—

Ben Max
That’s like the opposite of my question.

Josh Greenman
That’s the state, not the city — is there something you can do about that now?

Zellnor Myrie
The city has capital investment and a seat at the table for the MTA, and that is something, you know, that I think we could do at the city level.

Juan Manuel Benítez
Can you rank the mayors, from best to worst mayors in your lifetime?

Zellnor Myrie
I don’t think I can rank. Maybe I can say what I have liked about each of the mayors.

Josh Greenman
At least the best and the worst, though.

Zellnor Myrie
Let me say what I like the best about the mayors. I loved Koch’s New York City bravado, his ability to have a sense of the mood of the city and the pulse of the city. I appreciated the dignity and gravitas that Dinkins brought to the office, even in the face of incredible racial animus as the first Black mayor. Giuliani — and it’s hard to believe this now — but I appreciated how strongly he defended our immigrant community, because he recognized the importance to the city. I appreciated Bloomberg’s vision for a city that could still do big things post-9/11 and his management and execution on that vision. And I appreciated de Blasio’s almost singular focus on standing up universal pre-K. It was a demonstration of what City Hall can do when everything is pointing in the right direction, and we’re going to feel the impacts of that for years to come.

Josh Greenman
Do you appreciate what Giuliani did in driving the crime decline?

Zellnor Myrie
I don’t think he was solely responsible for that drop. I think that drop started under Mayor Dinkins and was initiated towards the end of the Dinkins term. But I do appreciate the drop in crime under Giuliani.

Ben Max
You forgot something on Adams that you appreciate.

Zellnor Myrie
The NYC Reads program.

Akash Mehta
Senator, the front runner in this race is Andrew Cuomo, and I think part of what is appealing to him about voters is the perception that even if voters don’t agree with everything he did, and don’t necessarily agree with every aspect of his character, there’s a perception that he was a strong, bold, competent governor. Do you think that assessment is correct? How would you respond to that?

Zellnor Myrie
I think the assessment of the perception is correct. I think the reality is different. I worked with this with the previous governor in the State Senate. I ran for State Senate because I thought Albany was failing our communities, and Governor Cuomo was part of that failure. I fought strenuously to keep SUNY Downstate open, past two sessions. Andrew Cuomo cut money to Downstate after designating it a COVID-only hospital under great fanfare, and then proposed a $100 million cut to the hospital. He cut rental assistance, which was followed almost immediately by a rise in homelessness. He is someone that fought tenant protections, that stymied the ability for us to get stronger tenant protections, which had a disproportionate impact in my district, and he cut funding for schools during COVID to the tune of close to $700 million in New York City, and said that we could find the money elsewhere. People forget this, but we were 89 people short in the Census. Eighty-nine. Because Governor Cuomo refused to put money in Census outreach. And we told them to. We were adamant about this. We did a lot of Census outreach in our own community. And so the notion that he managed to the benefit of New York City, to me, is a mistaken one, and should he enter this race, I’m prepared to make that case to New Yorkers.

Ben Max
If you had to vote today, how would you rank your opponents? You would obviously put yourself number one. What would the rest of your ballot look like?

Zellnor Myrie
I think it’s still too early. As you know, petitioning begins next week, and so let’s see who makes the ballot.

Ben Smith
Well, thank you, senator.