That’s it for the last debate between Eric Adams and Curtis Sliwa. The candidates will finish campaigning in the next week, before Election Day next Tuesday. Thanks for watching with us!
In his closing comments, Curtis Sliwa promises to close animal shelters where animals are killed, then pivots to showing love for the city’s most vulnerable humans: “It was Gandhi who said a society that does not take care of its animals does not take care of its people. Look at the emotionally disturbed. Look at the homeless. We have got to show compassion and caring.”
The candidates are asked for closing comments. Eric Adams appears ready to put his hand on the Bible and get sworn in. “Just as my dream is becoming a reality, I want yours to become a reality.”
When asked what might surprise people about them, Eric Adams reveals he cries all the time at “The Five Heartbeats,” a 1991 movie about a Motown-inspired vocal group that I just looked up on Wikipedia. Curtis Sliwa says that he loves electronic dance music.
For his mandated kind comment about his opponent, Curtis Sliwa praises Eric Adams’s passionate embrace of veganism.
Curtis Sliwa fawns over Eric Adams’s vegan diet. He says he admires the Democrat’s decision to change what he eats. “I’m like at the vegetarian stage,” Sliwa says.
Finally, Curtis Sliwa’s cats get a mention. Eric Adams commends his opponent “for what he’s doing around cats.”
The candidates are asked to say something nice to each other, a tall order tonight. Eric Adams praises Curtis Sliwa’s love of cats; Mr. Sliwa keeps more than a dozen.
Eric Adams says he supports biking in the city and would promote bike use among residents. He doesn’t mention it here, but he has pledged to add 300 miles of protected bike lanes in the city in four years if he is elected.
Curtis Sliwa says he has not called for eliminating bike lanes. But he has, saying that many of them are under-used and should be returned to parking spaces.
Curtis Sliwa says that the vaccine requirement for customers at restaurants in the city is chasing diners to New Jersey and Long Island. He said he voted recently and didn’t have to show his vaccine card. “But to get a cheeseburger and fries you have to show a vaccine passport and ID? That is crazy.”
Curtis Sliwa is really trying to rankle Eric Adams. He has derisively mentioned the trip Adams took to Monaco after the Democratic primary at least twice.
The next mayor will inherit a homelessness crisis that has largely defied Mayor Bill de Blasio’s costly efforts to fix it, mainly because the city remains woefully short of both affordable housing and so-called “supportive housing,” which includes social services for people with mental illness and substance abuse problems.
The candidates were asked Tuesday night how they would help people who are homeless get off the street. Eric Adams, the Democratic nominee, touted his plan to turn thousands of empty hotel rooms into supportive housing, spoke of the need to expand housing vouchers and said the city needed to shift its focus away from barracks-like homeless shelters, which are both expensive to run and widely loathed by the people who stay in them.
Curtis Sliwa, his Republican opponent, noted that Mr. Adams’s hotels-to-housing plan focuses on the outer boroughs, when most of the hotels that have closed are actually in Manhattan. “You are going to stick more homeless people in Staten Island, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx and exempt Manhattan?” he said. “Come on.”
The number of single adults in the city’s main shelter system has fallen slightly from a record high in the spring, but is still up about 60 percent since Mr. de Blasio took office in 2014. The family shelter population has dropped, but largely because of an eviction moratorium that is set to expire in January.
In parts of Manhattan, many random attacks and hate crimes have been linked to people living in streets and on subways with untreated mental illness. Assaults in the precinct around Times Square have more than doubled since before the pandemic, and felony assaults in the transit system are up more than 35 percent compared with 2019, even as ridership has dropped. The city’s response has included aggressively tearing down homeless encampments, a tactic advocates say merely pushes people from place to place.
Eric Adams says he would keep outdoor dining, but he would evaluate dining structures and use of sidewalk space.
Eric Adams appears to be having a hard time keeping that strained smile on his face.
Curtis Sliwa suggested Eric Adams consorted with murderers. Mr. Adams noted Mr. Sliwa had admitted to faking crimes.
And the debate had just begun.
Topically, the final debate before next Tuesday’s mayoral election has been similar to last week’s debate. The candidates largely agree on the future of New York City’s gifted and talented program (they would expand it). Mr. Adams supports some vaccine mandates for civil servants and students. Mr. Sliwa does not.
But tonally, tonight’s debate has proven far nastier.
After Mr. Adams argued he would have engaged more energetically with union leaders surrounding vaccine mandates, Mr. Sliwa suggested Mr. Adams talk to his “friend and teammate” Bill de Blasio, the outgoing mayor.
“You are acting like my son when he was 4 years old,” Mr. Adams shot back. “Show some discipline so we can get to all of these issues. You’re interrupting, you’re being disrespectful.”
Mr. Sliwa countered that Mr. Adams should stop being a “robot” and show some compassion for city workers who risk losing their salaries for failing to get vaccinated.
Soon enough, the conversation — or bare-knuckled brawl — got even more personal.
Mr. Sliwa accused Mr. Adams of actually living in New Jersey, an allusion to some of the cloudiness surrounding Mr. Adams’s residency, and he mocked Mr. Adams’s decision to blame his tax-filing errors on his purportedly homeless accountant.
“You fake where you live, Eric Adams,” Mr. Sliwa said.
Mr. Adams said Mr. Sliwa was demonstrating “clown-like actions,” and then accused him of hiding money so he would not have to pay child support.
“That is scurrilous that you would say that,” Mr. Sliwa said.
Both candidates repeated their stances on this from last week. Eric Adams supports congestion pricing. Curtis Sliwa opposes it, and he wants the transit authority to focus on fare evasion instead.
The candidates are asked about the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s congestion pricing plan, which would require drivers to pay a toll to enter parts of Manhattan. The next mayor will likely have little influence over the plan, which is being implemented by the M.T.A., but will be able to appoint someone to the board that will set the toll rates.
Curtis Sliwa slams Mayor Bill de Blasio’s record: “Is there a grade, below D-? F!” Eric Adams is gentler, giving him a B+. But both men agree the mayor’s universal pre-K was his biggest achievement in office.
“That’s a privilege for American citizens,” Curtis Sliwa says when asked if he supports legislation that would allow legal residents who are not citizens to vote in municipal elections. Eric Adams supports the plan.
Curtis Sliwa has definitely been more bombastic this debate, leaving Eric Adams to straddle the line between firing back or holding back to portray an image of being above the fray.
Curtis Sliwa notes that Adams’s hotels-to-housing plan focuses on the outer boroughs, when most of the hotels that have closed are actually in Manhattan. “You are going to stick more homeless people in Staten Island, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx and exempt Manhattan? Come on.”
Eric Adams has pushed a plan to turn tens of thousands of rooms in underused hotels outside of Manhattan into single-room occupancy housing for the homeless. Some of the hotels outside of Manhattan were “built to be shelters,” Adams said.
On homelessness, the moderator asks how to help homeless people but also get them off the street. Eric Adams touts his plan to turn thousands of empty hotel rooms into supportive housing for people with mental illness. He also says that the city needs to invoke Kendra’s Law, which allows someone to be ordered into treatment.
Urban design experts and climate-change researchers have, indeed, called for the city to add more green infrastructure that would help absorb water from intense rains or coastal flooding.
Question: What would you do to protect the city against the effects of rising waters and climate change? Eric Adams says, “A major green infrastructure deal” like the one he saw in Hoboken, N.J., to build retaining pools.
Climate change often gets short shrift in political debates like this. Moderator Bill Ritter is asking both candidates how they would prepare a city surrounded by water for the effects of a warming climate.
Curtis Sliwa uses a question about basement apartments to attack Eric Adams on whether the property he owns in Brooklyn is properly registered. Adams gave a tour of the apartment when questions arose about whether he actually lived there.
“Shutting down” illegal basement apartments would be a tall order — they exist essentially “off the books.” Going through each building in the city to find those that have been illegally converted would be a herculean if not impossible task.
Eric Adams said he would not “displace” the residents of those basement apartments. He wants to map them and track them, then work with city agencies to legalize them.
Question: What to do about the 100,000 illegal basement apartments in the city, some of which became deathtraps during the Ida floods — but are also a desperately needed source of affordable housing. Curtis Sliwa said he would shut them down, “but first fine the landlords for housing people in inhumane conditions.”
Basement apartments have become a big issue after 11 people were found dead inside them when the remnants of Hurricane Ida flooded New York City. Curtis Sliwa said he would move to shut down illegal basement apartments and fine landlords who operate them.
As the debate turns to the future of Rikers Island, Curtis Sliwa goes for hard-core scare tactics. “If you elect my opponent, you will have a community jail in your neighborhood,” he warns.
We aren’t covering a lot of new ground in this debate. Both candidates were given chances to articulate many of these same policy positions last week, and the questions haven’t differed substantially.
Curtis Sliwa says no congestion pricing, which he says will crush the middle class, even though the next mayor does not have the authority to stop it.
Given the opportunity to ask Curtis Sliwa any question, Eric Adams declines, saying, “My goal is to speak to the voters and there is not one question I have for Curtis.”
Pressed by Curtis Sliwa if he would support him if he lands an improbable victory, Eric Adams gives a grudging yes. “I do not support human beings, I support the position,” he said. Adams then says he has no questions to ask Sliwa.
“Get rid of the speed cameras,” says Curtis Sliwa when asked about raising taxes. “That’s a hidden tax.”
I can’t really explain the look on Eric Adams’s face as Curtis Sliwa continues to attack him aggressively. It somewhat looks like he is trying to keep from laughing.
To save money, Eric Adams says he would cut pay at every city agency 3 to 5 percent across the board.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the candidates for New York City mayor take opposing positions on coronavirus vaccine mandates.
Eric Adams backs Mayor Bill de Blasio’s decision to require nearly all of the city’s 300,000 municipal workers to have at least one dose of a vaccine by Nov. 1 — with a caveat. He said Tuesday he would have negotiated the policy with the unions before announcing it, which Mr. de Blasio did not do.
“I would have engaged with credible messages, and that is how you get things done,” Mr. Adams said.
In last week’s debate he ultimately said he would follow through with the mayor’s decision to put on leave or fire police officers and firefighters who defy the order — but only when pressed by the moderator to answer. “Yes, I will follow the orders that are in place,” he said.
Mr. Adams also said that he supports the city’s “Key to NYC” policy, which requires people to have received at least one dose of a vaccine to participate in indoor dining and entertainment. The mandates “have both proven to be successful in significantly boosting vaccinations in our city, which is expediting our return to normalcy,” he told The New York Times in a statement.
Curtis Sliwa, on the other hand, consistently rails against vaccine mandates, though he is vaccinated and says he wants others to be — if they so choose.
Mr. Sliwa participated in Monday’s large anti-mandate protest in which thousands of people — including many firefighters, police officers and sanitation workers — marched across the Brooklyn Bridge and demonstrated in front of City Hall. At the debate Tuesday, he called the policy, which will require unvaccinated workers to go on unpaid leave as of Nov. 1, “madness.”
“They could have been tested once a week if they cannot be vaccinated or will not be vaccinated,” he said. “It was working with the police, it was working with the firefighters.”
Mr. Sliwa also said at the debate that it was “ridiculous” that he has to show a vaccine card and I.D. to “get a cheeseburger and fries” in New York City, using question about outdoor dining to pivot to a critique of the vaccine mandate for people seeking to dine indoors.
In the final week of the mayoral campaign, Curtis Sliwa is courting Republicans, Democrats and animal lovers.
His dedication to animal welfare is personal. Mr. Sliwa has given numerous media tours to introduce New Yorkers to the 16 cats living inside his 320-square-foot studio apartment.
His feline collection began six years ago when he moved in with his fourth wife, Nancy Sliwa, in her apartment near Central Park. They took in rescue cats that were sick or abandoned.
Now Mr. Sliwa is making animal welfare a central part of his campaign. He released a “13-Point Animal Welfare Plan” last week that includes creating a “no-kill” shelter system and ending the horse carriage industry.
His first television ad featured him holding one of his cats, Tuna, and promising “compassionate solutions” as mayor.
During a reporter’s visit to his home over the summer, the cats climbed onto the dining table, walked across a photographer’s lap and gathered in a front window to watch pigeons. The apartment did not smell bad.
“You change the litter three times a day,” Mr. Sliwa said.
Eric Adams has leaned heavily on his biography along his increasingly likely path to become New York’s 110th mayor.
When he talks about public schools, Mr. Adams, 61, reminds voters that his dyslexia went undiscovered for most of his youth.
On homelessness, Mr. Adams has said that he carried a garbage bag full of clothes to school as a child because he was worried that his family would be evicted before he returned home.
On crime and public safety, Mr. Adams promises that he can both promote public safety and protect Black and Latino residents from civil rights abuses because he was beaten by the police as a teenager, but then joined the Police Department and spoke out against discriminatory behavior from within its ranks.
Mothers like this mother of Rochdale fought to keep me and countless boys like me alive and out of trouble. It’s a hard love, but we’re better for the generations who have dedicated themselves to fighting for a community, a city, a country, & world where every black life matters. pic.twitter.com/NMlqWlBuKO
— Eric Adams (@ericadamsfornyc) October 25, 2021
Since he won the Democratic primary, Mr. Adams has held a raft of fund-raisers with New York’s rich and powerful. He’s consulted with the billionaire former mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and dined with the billionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch while promising that New York City government will be more friendly to business.
This ability to be many things to many people and to convincingly shape-shift at will is Mr. Adams’s greatest skill but may also be his greatest liability. By appealing to so many varied constituencies at once, Mr. Adams has created a tent so large that disappointment is inevitable.
Even those who have known Mr. Adams for decades aren’t sure which version will show up to City Hall if, as expected, he wins the Nov. 2 election and becomes the city’s second Black mayor. Sometimes, even Mr. Adams does not seem to be sure.
“I’m so many formers,” Mr. Adams said during a July visit to the White House, where he declared himself the new face of the Democratic Party, “I’m trying to figure out the current.”
Curtis Sliwa and Eric Adams both had modest upbringings, and share working-class roots in New York City: Mr. Sliwa as the red-bereted founder of the Guardian Angels, and Mr. Adams as a former transit police officer.
But if recent past is prologue, Mr. Sliwa, the Republican mayoral nominee, is likely to use his last, best opportunity to make a dent in this year’s mayoral race by casting Mr. Adams as a bon vivant who revels in the company of billionaires — in contrast to the Democratic nominee’s carefully crafted image as the candidate of the working class.
“Eric has been wined, dined, and pocket-lined by the uber-rich, realtors, developers, and hedge fund monsters,” Mr. Sliwa said in a recent news release accompanying a video of himself trying to enter a private club where he said Mr. Adams was socializing. “Elite Eric has been bossed and bought.”
Mr. Sliwa, the founder of the Guardian Angels patrol group and a popular AM radio personality, lives in a 320-square-foot apartment on the Upper West Side with his fourth wife and more than a dozen cats. In recent weeks, he has mocked Mr. Adams’s tailored suits and his predilection for frequenting an exclusive private club in NoHo, Zero Bond.
Mr. Adams, who grew up in poverty before becoming a police captain, state senator and Brooklyn borough president, has in fact displayed a taste for New York City’s exclusive nightlife. He has made repeat appearances in the New York Post’s Page Six, after spending multiple nights at Zero Bond, whose patrons include Paris Hilton, and at Rao’s, the famously exclusive Italian joint in East Harlem.
After Mr. Adams went on a post-primary vacation to a European country he declined to name, Politico reported the destination was Monaco, a principality known for its popularity with the idle rich.
“Who goes to Monaco?” Mr. Sliwa asked during last week’s debate.
Mr. Adams has won the support of several billionaires, who have donated to him directly and funded a super PAC that campaigned on his behalf in the Democratic primary.
In recent days, Mr. Sliwa has also cast himself as the pro-motorist candidate, while Mr. Adams recently won the endorsement of StreetsPAC, a group that wants to rein in drivers on city streets.
If last week’s debate was any indication, the moderators of the second and final official mayoral debate between Eric Adams and Curtis Sliwa might have their hands full on Tuesday.
Mr. Sliwa, who has struggled to break through with voters before the Nov. 2 election, tried last week to rattle Mr. Adams, the front-runner, by constantly attacking him, speaking out of turn and talking over the moderators as they implored Mr. Sliwa to stop.
The moderators had threatened to cut off the microphone if the rules weren’t obeyed, but it often took at least two moderators to get Mr. Sliwa to stop speaking. And while Mr. Adams kept his composure, he complained more than once that the moderators were not enforcing the rules.
The task of keeping things in line tonight will fall to three respected veterans of New York City journalism: Bill Ritter, a WABC-TV anchor; Dave Evans, a WABC-TV political reporter; and Mariela Salgado, a news anchor from Univision 41.
Mr. Ritter, a native of Los Angeles who has worked as a journalist since 1972, will serve as the moderator. He started working at ABC in 1992 as a founding co-host of “Good Morning America Sunday.” Mr. Ritter was kicked out of San Diego State University for protesting against the Vietnam War, but returned to college 40 years later and received his degree at the New School in 2016. He has served as the moderator on mayoral debates airing on the station since 2001.
Mr. Evans, a panelist, arrived at WABC-TV in 1999 and has covered everything from the war in Iraq to the 2008 presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton. He has competed in many marathons and triathlons.
Ms. Salgado, also a panelist, is a native of Chile who has been a journalist for more than 20 years. She has reported on the disputed ballots in Florida during the 2000 election, the Sept. 11 terror attacks, and the plight of undocumented Central Americans as they made the dangerous journey to the United States.
In the second and final debate of the general election, the two contenders have starkly different imperatives.
For Curtis Sliwa, the long-shot Republican nominee who has struggled to gain traction, the debate represents the last chance to try to meaningfully alter the trajectory of the mayoral race. That is an exceptionally difficult task in New York City, a Democratic stronghold that elected Mayor Bill de Blasio by a winning margin of around 50 percentage points in 2013.
But Mr. Sliwa may try to seize any opportunity he can to stoke doubts about Eric Adams, the Democratic nominee. On the debate stage last week, the exchanges were relatively mild, and Mr. Adams ignored many of Mr. Sliwa’s criticisms.
For Mr. Adams, the task is the opposite: Do nothing that would change the dynamics of the race, while seeking to fuel enthusiasm in an election in which turnout is unpredictable and many voters are fatigued by politics.
Can he stay above the fray, as he did last week, or will he find himself drawn into a tit-for-tat with Mr. Sliwa? Can he offer a statesmanlike vision for the city while energizing viewers to turn out, or will he be put onto the defensive by moderators or his opponent?
Many political observers expect that the debate will do little to change the direction of the election, but it could affect how voters feel about their choices.
The second and final New York City mayoral debate between Eric Adams and Curtis Sliwa will be held at 7 p.m. Tuesday, and broadcast live on WABC-TV (Channel 7) and simulcast on NYC Life TV (Channel 25.1), the city-owned station.
The one-hour debate will also be streamed live online at ABC7NY.com and in Spanish on Univision41.com and Univision’s YouTube channel.
Bill Ritter, a WABC-TV anchor who has moderated mayoral debates for almost two decades, will serve as moderator. He’ll be joined by two panelists: Dave Evans, the station’s longtime political reporter, and Mariela Salgado, an anchor for Univision 41.
A team of reporters from The New York Times will be offering live commentary and analysis as the debate unfolds.
At the first New York City mayoral debate last week, the two major candidates sharpened their attacks on each other and made their strategies clear.
Eric Adams, the Democratic front-runner, tried to depict his Republican opponent, Curtis Sliwa, as a liar and clown. “I’m speaking to New Yorkers — not speaking to buffoonery,” Mr. Adams said, in perhaps the most memorable line of the night.
Mr. Sliwa sought to tie Mr. Adams to Mayor Bill de Blasio, who is unpopular in many corners of the city, while arguing that Mr. Adams was out of touch with working class New Yorkers. Mr. Sliwa has kept up those attacks in recent days.
“Eric Adams loves New York City so much that he lives in an apartment in New Jersey, spends his summers in Monaco, and hosts his parties out in the Hamptons,” Mr. Sliwa wrote on Twitter on Sunday, raising questions about Mr. Adams’s residency, a recent vacation to Europe and his fund-raisers on Long Island.
The debate also covered a broad array of critical issues facing New York City, from the crisis at the Rikers Island jail facility to a new vaccine mandate for city workers. Mr. Adams wants to close Rikers; Mr. Sliwa vowed to move there temporarily in his first days in office. Mr. Adams supports the vaccine mandate; Mr. Sliwa does not.
Mr. Adams agrees with a decision to remove a Thomas Jefferson statue from City Council chambers; Mr. Sliwa wants to keep the statue there.
Over the course of the hourlong debate, Mr. Adams tried to remain calm and argued that Mr. Sliwa’s confession that he made up crimes for publicity in the 1980s was disqualifying.
“He made up crime, New Yorkers,” Mr. Adams said. “That in itself is a crime.”
With just a week left until Election Day, the Democratic and Republican nominees for mayor of New York City will square off for the final time on Tuesday at 7 p.m. in the second of two televised debates.
Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president and Democratic nominee, remains the overwhelming favorite and could soon emerge as the second Black mayor in the city’s history. So confident is Mr. Adams in his chances of carrying the overwhelmingly Democratic city on Nov. 2 that he has already started building a transition team and vetting candidates for top government jobs.
His Republican opponent, Curtis Sliwa, will be trying to increase his odds on Tuesday, taking one last shot at knocking Mr. Adams off his glide path to City Hall. But so far, Mr. Sliwa, the flamboyant founder of the Guardian Angels patrol group and longtime media personality, has failed to break through to voters with a populist platform focused on public safety, animal rights and the plight of New York City’s homeless population.
The first Adams-Sliwa debate last week did little to shake up the race’s dynamic, even as the candidates disagreed on vaccine mandates for students, how to fight a rise in crime across the city and a congestion pricing plan.
Mr. Adams stuck to broad platitudes, promising to make New York City safer and more prosperous. He largely ignored the bait flung by Mr. Sliwa, who tried to lure him into fights over whether he actually lived in New York City and where he vacations.
“I’m speaking to New Yorkers,” Mr. Adams quipped. “Not speaking to buffoonery.”
But Mr. Adams also eluded questions from moderators eager to pin down more specific policy plans from a candidate whose views have repeatedly evolved.
Rallying with prominent Democrats on Sunday, Mr. Adams shared a piece of campaign advice for himself in the race’s final week: “You don’t win a baseball game in the eighth inning.”
Voters began casting ballots early across the city in modest numbers last weekend and can do so every day through Sunday.