New York mayoral race tests Democratic Party's stance on policing
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[June 01, 2021]
By James Oliphant
(Reuters) - After more than 20 people were
shot during another bloody weekend in New York, Andrew Yang, a leading
candidate to become the city’s next mayor, stood outside a Bronx housing
project and called for an immediate increase in the number of police
officers who investigate gun crimes and patrol subways.
The city, Yang said on Thursday, "is failing us. We can do better."
A year ago, protests over police brutality and racial injustice rocked
cities across the country. Cries of “defund the police” and calls for
reform echoed throughout the Democratic Party. But New York's mayoral
contest suggests a different political reality is taking hold among
Democrats as urban areas nationwide dig out from the coronavirus
pandemic.
The pandemic triggered massive job losses, left streets deserted,
strained local budgets and contributed to a national rise in violent
crime. The murder rate in U.S. cities jumped 25% or more in 2020, FBI
statistics show, and is continuing to escalate this year. Last week, the
Biden administration launched an initiative to help combat the spike in
gun violence and homicides.
The debate over the future of policing is taking place daily in New
York, as a bevy of Democrats jockey for the party’s nomination ahead of
the June 22 primary that will likely decide who becomes mayor. So far,
candidates who have embraced a pro-law enforcement message and pushed
back against progressive calls to reduce funding for police departments
seem to have the upper hand.
The election's outcome may provide a window into how voters prioritize
issues in a post-pandemic society. That has significant implications for
Democrats as they head toward the 2022 elections, when their control of
Congress will be at stake — and as they continue to grapple with
tensions between the moderate and more liberal voices within the party.
“What happens in New York goes elsewhere. This is a harbinger of what’s
to come,” said Douglas Schoen, a Democratic pollster and longtime
adviser to former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
CITY IN CRISIS
For many in COVID-scarred New York, indelible images of a city in crisis
came last May, when peaceful protests over racial injustice descended
into several nights of looting and mayhem on empty avenues in Manhattan
and Brooklyn.
More recently, the city has been rattled by a series of violent
incidents. Shootings are up 90% since the same time a year ago.

A poll conducted this month by the Manhattan Institute, a conservative
think tank, found that nearly half of Democratic primary voters rank
public safety as their top concern and that just 18% said they want
fewer police patrolling their neighborhoods. A recent Emerson College
poll also listed public safety as voters' top issue.
“This mayoral race is absolutely a window into what New Yorkers want to
see in a city reborn,” said Michael Hendrix, the Manhattan Institute’s
director of state and local policy. “They want a return to economic
growth and jobs. They want safe streets and a sense of some kind of
public order."
That has given an opening for moderate candidates such as Yang, an
entrepreneur and former presidential candidate; Eric Adams, a former
police officer and current Brooklyn borough president; and Kathryn
Garcia, a longtime civil servant who ran the city’s sanitation
department.
Polls have showed them among the top of the field, with progressives
such as civil rights lawyer Maya Wiley lagging behind, although the race
remains fluid.
Adams has made public safety a centerpiece of his campaign, often
showing up at crime scenes around the city. He has pledged to revive a
controversial anti-crime unit within the New York Police Department and
supports a revised version of a police tactic known as “stop and frisk”
that has been widely criticized by activists as intrusive and
discriminatory.
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Andrew Yang, democratic candidate for mayor of New York City, speaks
during a campaign appearance at City Hall Park in New York City,
U.S., May 24, 2021. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

He has tried to win over skeptics by promising better
training for police officers and other reforms. Norman Siegel, a
former head of the American Civil Liberties Union's New York chapter
who endorsed Adams, said street-level tactics like "stop and frisk"
are necessary.
“There’s guns on the street. There’s increasing shootings. You can’t
be blind to that,” Siegel said. “I’m convinced with Eric as mayor we
will get a different NYPD.”

Progressives in the city hope the election’s new ranked-choice
voting system will allow a candidate such as Wiley to emerge as
other hopefuls are eliminated – and that perhaps the highly popular
progressive U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will
endorse a like-minded candidate soon.
PAYING ATTENTION
Democrats and Republicans alike will be watching to see the
direction the city chooses.
Earlier this month, Democrats conceded in an internal memo examining
the 2020 election that Republican attacks last year on their
candidates over issues such as defunding the police were effective
in some battleground races, perhaps costing them seats in the U.S.
House of Representatives and elsewhere.
Support for the Black Lives Matter movement and dramatic police
reform had become a litmus test for some Democrats. President Joe
Biden largely side-stepped the issue as a candidate. Other moderate
Democrats, even if they had never expressed support for slashing
police budgets, found themselves on the defensive anyway.
In a speech on Thursday, the Senate’s top Republican, Mitch
McConnell, served notice that his party intends to make crime a
major issue in next year's midterm elections by blasting “defund the
police” efforts.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the arm of the
party that oversees House races, said it plans to blunt those
attacks by emphasizing the economic relief Congress has sent to
pandemic-battered communities and by pointing to federal police
reform legislation that passed in the House but remains stalled in
the Senate.
The pandemic and surge in crime came at a perilous time for
progressive candidates and the Black Lives Matter movement, said
Christina Greer, political science professor at Fordham University.
The debate over policing has become “more nuanced, more
complicated.”

“When crime starts to rise, whether its real or perceived," she
said, "voters tend to want a more conservative, law-and-order
candidate."
(Reporting by James Oliphant in Washington; Editing by Colleen
Jenkins and Alistair Bell)
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