Is Andrew Yang yanking our chain? Beware the lure of this mayoral candidate
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New Yorkers like to think of themselves as savvier than Podunkers or Peorians (hey, mom!), but I’m not convinced. They also like to say they were on to the Donald since back in the day, while ignoring the fact that Trump made his bones here long before he brought his act to Washington.
Flipping that script, a guy whose main credential is the earned media he collected over his stunt presidential campaign is now two months away from getting effectively elected as our next mayor if the primary polls hold up.
Before running for mayor, Andrew Yang never bothered voting in a mayoral election. He left Manhattan to spend the worst of the pandemic in his second home in the Hudson Valley. And the signature idea of his national campaign — giving every adult a universal basic income — isn’t relevant here, while his claim that he can deliver for New Yorkers because Joe and Kamala are his pals now is simply ridiculous.
The only thing that really carries over from that presidential run, other than name recognition and the benefit of no actual record to hold him to account for, is whatever cash is getting circuitously offloaded from his presidential operations to the supposedly independent PACs supporting his mayoral bid.
I wrote about nine weeks ago that this isn’t the first time “a cocksure candidate with a talent for TV shoots to the top of the polls after making a dramatic late jump into the mayoral race.” But Andrew Yang makes Anthony Weiner — who never accomplished anything in public office except winning elections, going on TV and flapping his lips — seem like a heavy hitter.
And Yang isn’t going to pull a Weiner. He’s held steady in the polls since I wrote that, even as rivals have dunked on his dumb tweets, half-baked ideas, and a viral clip last week of him laughing nervously in response to a wildly misogynistic questioner. Polls can change fast, but there’s a real chance Democrats are nine weeks away from rolling the dice on a flimflam man who kept campaigning around the city while the virus was raging and other candidates were taking responsible precautions so that he first had to isolate himself and then resumed going out and promptly caught the virus and had to isolate again.
There may not be a perfect Gallant in the race, but are we really going to elect Mayor Goofus? He literally got out when the going got tough!
Now that Madison Ave. is in effect a subsidiary of Google and Facebook, it seems like New Yorkers are as susceptible to the political soft sell as suckers anywhere else — or maybe they always were.
By the way, Yang’s two campaign managers are both on the payroll of the messaging and lobbying shop run by the guy who ran Mike Bloomberg’s 2009 campaign (unofficial motto: “we got this, so just stay home”) and who’s previously worked for Uber and the PBA to beat down hapless Bill de Blasio. That’s Bradley Tusk, whose memoir is titled “The Fixer: My Adventures Saving Startups from Death by Politics,” who’s advocated for gambling concerns throughout his career, and who sometimes boasts that he’s rich enough, after working for Uber for equity, that politics is just his hobby.
Coincidentally, Yang at one point tossed out the terrible idea of putting a casino on Governors Island.
To be sure, it’s exciting to see an Asian candidate leading the mayoral field here for the first time as Yang has slipped into the role of cheerleader for New York and personality corrective to de Blasio. It’s the part City Council Speaker Corey Johnson had hoped to play before he got caught in the political crosscurrents of trying to defund the police and then cited depression to explain why he was abandoning his long-planned mayoral run before recovering enough to run for controller.
Along the way, Yang has sucked up media attention in a field where no one else in the top polling tier inspires much confidence.
Eric Adams is a tightly wound, gun-packing former Farrakhan apologist and Republican, not to mention an ex-cop many cops are deeply suspicious of. Scott Stringer is the epitome of a party regular and career politician who’s trying to offer himself as both the adult in the room and the older, white, nebbishy avatar of young, radical progressives of color. Maya Wiley, loathe as she is to admit it, is a veteran of the de Blasio administration who’s struggled to raise funds as a first-time candidate (and also, perhaps, as a woman). And Kathryn Garcia, whose competence and perspective appeal to me, has struggled to raise money or register in the polls so far.
Still, if you’re backing a mayoral candidate whose main qualification is that he’s on TV a lot now because he was on TV a lot last year, you’re a sucker — and you might be bringing the rest of us down with you.
