About Maya Wiley: What’s wrong with AOC’s choice for NYC mayor

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, testing her clout and that of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party she leads, says Maya Wiley is the best mayoral candidate. Wiley isn’t on our ranked-choice ballot (we put Kathryn Garcia first, Eric Adams second and Ray McGuire third), and this seems like a good time to explain why.

Year-to-date shootings are up 110%, homicides are up 17% over 2019, and other street violence is spreading fear. The next mayor must meet the moment with more effective policing. Wiley has called gun violence “a public health crisis built on the failure to address racial equality” — an exceedingly simplistic notion — and seems to think safety can be restored mainly by expanding jobs, social services, behavioral therapy and violence interrupters. We want those things, but robust law enforcement is required, too, and Wiley will set that back if she follows through by slashing the NYPD budget by $1 billion.

Plus, Wiley already whiffed a big chance, as Mayor de Blasio’s chair of the Civilian Complaint Review Board, to improve police accountability. During her tenure, she agreed with de Blasio when he reversed long-standing policy and began making police disciplinary records secret.

Rather than letting charter schools, which often do a better job educating disadvantaged youngsters than their district-run counterparts, grow to meet demand, Wiley wants to retain an arbitrary state cap on their numbers. Rather than smartly embracing innovative approaches to improve investment in and management of crumbling NYCHA housing, Wiley has opposed creating a public housing preservation trust that would leverage private capital and help fix a broken bureaucracy. And she supports subjecting real-estate developments to additional layers of review rather than encouraging development, a sure way to make it harder for housing to get built in a city starved for it.

But wait, there’s more. As de Blasio’s counsel, Wiley crafted his infamous “agents of the city” excuse to shield from public scrutiny communications with a cadre of close advisers.

Rank Wiley fifth, tops.