Make it Mayor Garcia: New Yorkers should choose Kathryn Garcia in the Democratic primary for NYC mayor

The next mayor of New York will assume leadership of America’s largest city at a hinge in its history, and not only because the five boroughs are still reeling from the loss of more than 30,000 lives and hundreds of thousands of jobs to the COVID pandemic.

The winner of the June 22 Democratic primary will in all certainty be sworn in on Jan. 1; this year, the GOP’s got nothing. The candidate best equipped to guide us through this difficult moment is Kathryn Garcia.

No thanks to a two-term mayor who repeatedly let ideology, fealty to outside interests and his own larger political ambitions obstruct pragmatic policy, Bill de Blasio’s successor will take office facing significant, immediate challenges, including an estimated recurring $5 billion budget gap, precipitous declines in the value of once-buoyant property tax revenue generators like commercial office buildings and hotels and the urgent need to reverse learning loss suffered during two years of cobbled-together public schooling. Meanwhile, the public safety renaissance of the last 30 years suddenly looks built on a shaky foundation, as shootings have nearly doubled from two years ago, and incidents of scary, random violence seem to be on the rise.

And did we mention the climate is changing, bringing a rising risk of floods to our city of islands?

Though charisma never hurt a politician, the city’s problems won’t be solved with big ideas or a big personality alone. They require someone with experience not just in managing a large and diverse workforce, but in the particular, vast and complex realm of New York City government.

The field of major Democratic contenders includes three big-spenders who’ve already made promises to every left-wing interest group in the five boroughs (Dianne Morales, Maya Wiley and Scott Stringer), two newbies who’ve shown little interest in and too little knowledge of the nuts and bolts of government (Andrew Yang and Ray McGuire), and two experienced, more independent-minded pols who are genuinely ready to lead (Eric Adams and Garcia).

Garcia is a cut above Adams, and head and shoulders over the others. As we assessed the field, including hour-long interviews with each major contender, we were repeatedly reminded of her preparedness, pragmatism and well-placed priorities, all of which in this election must trump lockstep obedience to political ideology.

Preparedness

A New York City native (Stuyvesant High School class of 1988) and veteran of the Bloomberg and de Blasio administrations, Garcia brings a record in government that’s broad and deep. She was the chief operating officer of the Department of Environmental Protection under Bloomberg and served nearly eight years as sanitation commissioner under de Blasio, managing a force of nearly 10,000 employees hauling garbage and plowing streets, before resigning to run for mayor.

Even as she led a department where results were all that mattered — recall the old LaGuardia saw about there being no Democratic or Republican way to pick up the garbage — de Blasio tapped Garcia to assume additional leadership roles cleaning up messes at other, often struggling agencies. She rushed to the scene to help address the lasting shame of childhood lead poisoning in public housing; served as interim chair of NYCHA when it needed a strong hand; and was responsible for delivering 130 million meals to homebound people during the early months of COVID.

De Blasio botched a lot, but making Garcia a one-woman management SWAT team was something he got right. Time and again, she took charge of byzantine bureaucracies and got results.

Unique among the candidates, Garcia has experience leading a huge unionized workforce — a critically important skill for any mayor.

In discussion with this board, her fluency in the sprawling language and practices of dozens of city agencies came through clearly, including a whip-smart sense of what is redundant or broken in those agencies.

Pragmatism

But a mayoral race is more than a resume contest. It’s a test of whose plans and ability to execute them are the best match for the challenges faced by the nation’s largest city at any given moment in its history.

Here again, Garcia leads the field. She’s one of only a handful of candidates who’ve shown the political independence to support the NYCHA Blueprint, a potentially transformative plan to use existing federal housing subsidies to marshal private resources to help pay for the crumbling housing authority’s estimated $40 billion worth of capital needs. Unlike other candidates’ promises, that plan can deliver results to residents of dilapidated buildings.

She’s a committed champion of the environment, but also was among the only candidates to refuse to score cheap political points by signing onto an unrealistic 20-point pledge, which included impossible to keep planks like promising to fully end the city’s reliance on natural gas, before we’ve even got enough renewable energy sources to replace it. Her candor in acknowledging flaws in the city’s Local Law 97, a blunt instrument that punishes buildings for their tenants’ energy use, is refreshing.

She’s laid out concrete, specific goals, not unhelpful platitudes, for addressing the city’s mental health crisis — pledging to increase the city’s use of the underutilized tools already at its disposal, including Kendra’s Law and Assertive Community Treatment, both proven effective at delivering treatment and support to people struggling with mental illness or addiction.

Priorities

A manager is occasionally forgiven for losing the forest for the trees. A leader, which is what Garcia aspires to be, must know when to cast aside pet projects and smaller priorities to center on what matters most. Garcia knows that without public safety, strong schools, a firm budgetary foundation and basic livability for the working- and middle-class, New York City will be adrift.

Her plans combining further criminal justice reforms with robust, targeted policing are among the best. Bucking the tide, she calls for continuing to enforce certain quality-of-life offenses, like open-air drug dealing near schools. She would tackle the drivers of gun crime with data, while also promising to hold officers accountable for misconduct. The needle-threading task of resuming the city’s critical crime decline while instituting further reforms requires wisdom, balance and boldness. She’s got it.

So too on schooling, Garcia correctly believes in turning New York City’s public schools, which are really two or three systems of wildly variable quality, into a single, genuinely integrated system that sets a higher bar for all kids and helps them meet it. But in getting there, she is correctly respectful of the islands of excellence — like the specialized high schools and exemplary charter schools — that are already doing a great job educating thousands and keeping their families in the system.

Budgetarily, she’s prepared to wrestle with a city government that’s grown faster than inflation, and beyond our means, under de Blasio.

And on quality of life, that tough-to-pin-down collection of improvements that make life in New York City less of a migraine than it once was: Garcia truly considers it her bread and butter.

The rest of the ballot

This election is the first mayoral contest where voters can rank up to five choices among the 13 (!) on the Democratic ballot.

Eric Adams, an ex-cop and state legislator and current Brooklyn borough president, is a strong second. Despite attempts by some on the left to pigeonhole him as conservative for his support for police, he’s been a clear, consistent and often courageous voice for law-enforcement reform since long before it became politically fashionable — and he’s got excellent plans to bend the curve on public safety. Not just that: Across the board, he has solid, imaginative, idiosyncratic ideas.

He isn’t our top choice because he can be erratic, and alienating in his public statements, such as when he told middle Americans to “go back to Iowa.” A mayor must exercise more discipline. He’s also made questionable hires and, shades of de Blasio, has too many entanglements with people looking to profit by doing business with the city.

Third on our ballot is McGuire, a charismatic and level-headed corporate manager with a compelling life story and the potential to bridge divides, but there are big blanks in his knowledge of city government. He’s running on his potential, not his record.

Yang has some good instincts and promises an era of big ideas, but many of those he’s offered in the campaign aren’t even fit for the back of an envelope. Shaun Donovan has an impressive resume and detailed blueprints, but over-rehearsed campaign appearances have not impressed, nor has his embrace of a PAC entirely funded with millions from his dad.

Wiley and Morales are both accomplished women, but their agendas are dogmatic to a fault, a poor fit for a city at a crossroads. And while we have nothing against Stringer as a person — we’ve endorsed him in the past, including to be city controller — he’s followed them, and the left, off the deep end.

Garcia says New Yorkers are “really worried that they’re going to get sold a slogan and not get what they think they’re buying.” Absolutely right. Sell the rest. Buy Garcia.