July 15, 2025 — In an extended (well over one-hour) interview yesterday evening, Remapping Debate focused on Jim Walden’s housing plans, also covering education and civil rights issues. At the end of the interview, we touched on his proposal for all but the “free market” candidates polling highest early in the fall to drop out to create a one-on-way race with the Democratic nominee, Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani. Walden was unsparing in his criticism of Mandami. Skip directly to the interview and accompanying interactive transcript.
Our education system fails too many kids
On elementary school education (not pre-k, not 3K, not afterschool, but in-school) — a subject remarkably neglected during the primary campaign — noted that it is still the case that “50 percent of our kids are not reading or doing math at grade level,” a result that is “just not acceptable” and one at variance with “so many other cities that are enjoying a rebirth of their education systems and really getting to kids that are falling behind…”
Waldens proposes a “Mayor’s district” for the elementary schools with the “worst outcomes” where class size would be substantially reduced (to 10-12 students on average) and where he would try to negotiate merit pay to incentivize senior teachers to work in those schools.
He also proposes to expand learning centers that are based in New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) campuses.
Housing: help the market work its magic
Walden is a true believer in what he styles a “free market” approach. That approach, though, involves very active governmental involvement. Thus, for example, Walden proposes in his first term to give to developers each year, at no cost, 25 City-owned properties that have or can have an average of 300 apartments, of which 30 percent must be “truly affordable” (which Walden defines as requiring no more than 25 percent of borough-based median household income).
His written housing blueprint is clear more broadly about what the City will be doing: “Through the programs outlned herein, NYC will put a lot of money in the pockets of developers. Some will decry that. I see it as an opportunity.”1His position is that it is a better bet to have a streamlined program where the transfer of government assets is made up front, as opposed to tax-incentive programs that limit tax revenue over time.
Walden’s view, despite the active government role is that “the government’s just a gateway to a program that’s largely gonna be a contract between two private parties, a tenant and a landlord.”
Two themes came through repeatedly: one is deregulatory. Thus, he has a negative view of the 2019 rent-reform legislation and thinks it makes sense to “remove a lot of regulations and let the market work.”
The second is his view of rent stabilization as a program that, properly, should be means-tested and, in many cases, transitional.
So, a “young professional”, or public servant, or “plumbers, carpenters, and auto mechanics” would have access to a new kind of rent stabilization in Walden’s vision. Rent would be fixed for five years, then go up to 80 percent of market, and, in year seven, to market. He imagines that those tenants will be on a trajectory to afford market rents … or else find someplace else to live. (When such an apartment was vacated, the next tenant would be one eligible to pay no more than 25 percent of the then current borough-based median household income.)
Others having special access to the program would be housing-insecure seniors and tenants in tnhe most poorly maintained rent-stabilized buildings. Their tenancies would be govdrned by cost-of-living an increased building-expense raises.
Walden describes his plan for reconstructing NYCHA campuses as a “pilot,” but it does comprise a substantial portion (perhaps 50 percent) of the affordable units he would create. A centerpiece of the plan — which he says would require genuine tenant consent — would be the physical rebuilding of NYCHA campuses, converting “superblocks” to normally sized city blocks and building out to the street, and adding, depending on location, market-rate buildings.
- 1.
See page 106. Walden’s blueprint goes on to assert that, as a result of the programs proposed, there would be $5 billion of value added each year, on which he would place a 5 percent value-added tax to fund a “KIds in Poverty” program ($10,000 given to each child born to a family whose income was below the poverty line).
Civil rights approach
In the course of the discussion of housing, the conversation turned to the circumstances under which he would support upzoning. I frame the question in this way:
A relatively small part of your plan involves what you call targeted upzoning which would require community board approval. And my question for you on this is, “How do you have that kind of system where you don’t simply have a replication of what’s happened over decades, where there are community districts that are both deeply racially segregated and deeply resistant to any upzone?”
Walden said he hoped “that a large part of the segregation is in NYCHA communities,” segregation he believed his NYCHA reconstruction plans would help to tackle. I pointed out that “a very significant part of the city’s segregation exists in White Brooklyn, in White Queens, and White Staten Island.”
Walden’s approach was firmly in the incentives-only or “carrots-only” mode: “What I don’t want to do is I don’t want to say we need more housing and so I’m gonna dump it in a community that doesn’t want it.” Note: this approach, as it has been tried in New York City and in the New York metropolitan area over the last 50 years, has consistently failed.
I raised the issue of what has variously been described as antisemitism or “the safety of Jewish New Yorkers” in this way (this segement begins at approxinmately the 59:30 mark):
So at 5:00 PM on January 5th, several hundred protestors identifying themselves as “anti Zionists” occupy Grand Central Station “for Palestine.” And they block access to shops, commuter trains, and the subway. And point out there’s a Zionist on the MTA’s board.” What, if anything, does Mayor Walden do and say?
Walden responded by saying he would have a resonse led by the Police Commissioner, and, more broadly, that the City needs to be more clear about defining and enforcing constitutionally permissible time, place, and manner restrictions.
On domestic violence, I raised the recently emerged statement of Assembly Member Mamdani that the response to incidents of domestic violence “frankly should have nothing to do” with the Police Department. Walden’s response was scorching:
Police are trained to deal with domestic violence situations. They do it every single day. They do it very well. They do it across the city. Of course, that doesn’t mean that situations don’t get out of control because people are people. So when Mr. Mamdani says that police aren’t trained to do this, that, or the other thing, I don’t think he has the first clue what the police training regimen is at the academy and after the academy. But I think it is a ridiculous notion that you’re gonna send unarmed people into domestic violence situations in circumstances where you don’t know whether or not one or both of the people have weapons and expect a good outcome.
Consolidating the field
At the end of the interview (starting at the 1:05:26 mark), the discussion turned to Walden’s plan to try to consolidate the field of “centrist” (or anti-Mamdani) candidates, what, if anything, his potential support for Mayor Adams or former Governor Cuomo says about his initial rationale for entering the race, and what, in his view, would have constituted a better field.
Note: the interview was recorded on Zoom (both audio and video), which explains why Mr. Walden made references to “viewers,” not listeners, prior to my reminding him that we were only going to be publishing the audio.
Transcript notes: You can click anywhere on the transcript. If the audio is already playing, it will skip to the selected point. If the audio is not playing, first select the desired text, then press play. On some browers the in-transcript search function is only highlighting hits, not scrolling down into them. If that happens, just use the regular find function in your browser.
Transcript
Gurian: I’m Craig Gurian, the editor of Remapping Debate, and I’m joined, and I’m pleased to welcome, Jim Walden, prominent New York City attorney, and currently the fifth most prominent New York City mayoral candidate. Welcome, Jim. Walden: Thank you for having me on. Gurian: Education has gotten remarkably little attention in the campaign so far. Why is that?
Walden: I can’t speak for the candidates. It’s obviously been a priority for me as a public school kid that was almost almost lost in the system. I really appreciate and honor the couple of high school teachers that saw my promise and ultimately, and I think it was 11th grade, finally got me into our version of a gifted and talented program. But the New York City School system, it just fails too many kids. As you look through the data, and it’s obvious that proficiency rates for reading and math in fourth grade and eighth grade hover around 50%. That’s a modest increase over years past, but that just means that 50% of our kids are not reading or doing math at grade level. And that’s, in the greatest city of the world, that’s just not acceptable. I put out an education policy that is at least the tip of the iceberg trying to get at some problems that I think are significant. There’s more work to be done. Gurian: I’ve used the characterization that we have with five alarm fire. Does that overstate the problem? How bad do you think it is? Walden: Certainly in disadvantaged schools, I think that for the kids that that can’t read or do basic math at fourth and eighth grade the outcomes for those kids are bleak and it damns them to a cycle of poverty. And and in some ways opens up the possibility if they have no other options, that they enter the criminal justice system, which is a terrible outcome. Our focus should be on increasing their opportunities, which begins at elementary school education, and there’s no reason that we can’t get that right. There’s so many other cities that are enjoying a rebirth of their education systems and really getting to kids that are falling behind and we need to devote more time and resources and attention. Yeah. Landing that plane. Gurian: So you’ve described particular proposals for what you call “struggling elementary school kids.” Could you summarize your targeted smaller class size and higher teacher pay proposals? Walden: Sure. The it’s a, it’s pretty simple. I would, for those schools that have the worst outcomes in the elementary schools that would create a Mayor’s district. There was a Chancellor’s district years ago, and that concept didn’t continue into subsequent administrations. I want this, I want my focus to be on those schools, and I want to shrink the class sizes to much smaller cohorts. So kids are getting more individualized attention. I want to use a version of merit pay that’s tethered to awarding senior status to the best educators and give them incentives to go to those schools. I want to increase the supports that are necessary to more proactively identify kids that are struggling and get them specialized supports. I want to integrate some of these programs eventually into rebuilt NYCHA communities, both in community centers. When I say NYCHA, I know you — for your listeners that don’t know, that’s our what, the way we describe our public housing communities. One of my plans in the housing, which I’m sure we’ll get to, is to rebuild 7% of those communities every year. When I do that, I want to have remodeled and much more vibrant community centers that have learning centers in them. And for family units, I wanna put a learning center in their apartments so that parents can have more oversight and the amount of time kids are spending doing homework and practicing reading and practicing math. Gurian: In terms of schools who have the greatest percentage of kids who are struggling how small under your plan would class sizes get? Walden: I’d wanna maintain flexibility because I can imagine in the in the schools that have the worst statistics, having class sizes around eight to 10 I think would be preferable. But I think the plan, I targeted something around 10 to 12.
Gurian: What about kids who essentially need one-on-one assistance, not because of a disability, but because of a range of circumstances that they find themselves in? Is something that is simply beyond the scope of what a public school system can be expected to do well? Walden: I don’t think that our public school system should be worse alternatives than private schools or parochial schools. Part of the reason of shrinking the class sizes and adding additional supports, including reading specialists and math specialists who are available at hours that school is not in session, is to get that kind of individualized support. We’re gonna have to try it in a pilot program to see how it works and where the kinks are and try to work those out. But certainly my goal is to make sure that every single kid that is having trouble and at K through three, gets the supports that they need so that they, obviously can perform at grade level, but also can overcome some of the challenges or at least learn to cope from an educational perspective with those challenges so that they can succeed. Gurian: Do, does the existence of neighborhoods of concentrated poverty and of racial and ethnic segregation have anything to do with the problems in education? And if so, what’s the plan on that end? Walden: The schools that would be the part of the mayor’s district would in fact be the schools where there, there happens to be the greatest poverty, the most segregation. That’s one of the reasons that I’ve focused on the NYCHA community in particular. I’ve spoken to so many parents as I’ve gone to different public housing communities who’ve said repeatedly my kids need more help. They need more help from their teachers. They need more supports. We don’t need people building more new basketball courts. We need people to offer mentoring and additional learning supports for our kids so that they have a fair chance in the world. So it’s something that I think that parents and particularly in Black and Brown communities where a lot of the poverty is concentrated, are gonna receive very with what, with open arms. Gurian: You’re describing, I think, what sometimes referred to — maybe it’s become too much jargon laden — as place-based solutions. What I’m really asking you about here is: is there a harm we impose in the educational sector by continuing to tolerate neighborhoods of concentrated poverty and a very high level of racial and ethnic segregation in New York? Walden: Yeah. So can you just gimme a second, Craig? I’m just gonna stand up ‘cause my back’s bothering me with bit. I’m actually training for a boxing match and, my, my training has has been arduous. So it’s having a little prob problem on my back, so thank you. The answer to that question is, yeah, of course there’s a harm to segregation and that’s one of the reasons when I rebuild the NYCHA communities that I want to take them. And for those of your viewers that don’t. Aren’t in New York or are not familiar with these NYCHA campuses. They were built in the fifties, sixties some in the early seventies. And they were intended to be what we would say now is progressive in the sense of providing stable housing that is affordable housing that is clean and safe. Now a lot of those things over the course of time have fallen away. They’re the buildings are, in many instances, crumbling. They can’t even get repairs in a timely way. There’ve been a number of litigations and even at one point a monitor to try to improve the situation there. But these are largely segregated communities that are set back from the street and creates a physical segregation between them and even their surrounding communities. And so the NYCHA rebuild in my plan is a much different model where we bring the buildings back to the street side and we integrate them economically so that kids in poverty are growing up around low, but not so low income people, middle income people, luxury housing. And we create a vibrant community where people from all walks of life can live together. A number of people thought that it might not succeed, but but I believe that it will if it’s, if it can see succeed anywhere, it can succeed in New York. I think that even for folks that want luxury housing, they would welcome the idea of being in an economically integrated area where, kids in NYCHA communities can grow up next to people who are very wealthy. And I think that the derivative benefits, the collateral benefits of that sort of integration is is super important to helping kids see that there is a way, there is a life for them that’s different than they might see now in a community that’s just concentrated with people having real struggles with paying the bills and trying to find opportunities and trying to get a piece of the American dream, Gurian: We’ll be getting back to, NYCHA housing. I wanted to ask you just a couple more education questions. There are some advocates who continue to assert that it’s possible for a teacher to have students in his or her classroom with a wide range of proficiency in reading and math — say three or four grade levels — and somehow successfully attend to the needs of all those children. What’s your view? Walden: I have not looked closely at the data. That sounds to me like a frankly, a recipe for disaster where you’re essentially holding kids that are farther along back because you have to teach to the lowest common denominator. But it, there may be a way to structure that kind of a program that works, but but I have not studied that closely. Gurian: Lastly, to the extent, to what extent are higher performing students in your view, getting the enrichment they need and how do you Correct any inadequacies currently in the system? Walden: For, let’s just take the gifted and talented program and the specialized high schools in New York, which is where the highest performing kids tend to go. There’s just not enough space. There’s constantly kids that that qualify for the gifted and talented program that don’t get seats. There have been changes to the criteria so that there are softer factors that allow some kids to take those seats, even though they may not be ready to perform at the level of the other students. And so there’s certainly plenty of anecdotal reports of teachers teaching down to the kids that are that are less prepared for the rigors of a gifted and talented program. I haven’t seen the Department of Education release data that shows for those kids that enter the gifted and talented programs with those kind of soft criteria recommendations as opposed to the the entrance test how they perform in those programs and whether or not they’re really getting the benefit of the programs. And so I, my general view is we need to do a better job at expanding the programs and having what I would call hard criteria as the gateway to the programs. And then for kids that that are close to, but they are not at the level where they perform on those tests to give those kids extra support so that even if they can’t get into one of the programs the first time that they get extra preparation and attention so that they’ll succeed the second time. So there’ll be entrance points to these programs all along the way. Gurian: Let’s turn to housing if we can. And there’s a video you’ve made that I’ve seen which has a very striking claim in it that your housing plan will your plan will solve the housing crisis, not put a dent in it, not set us on a better road, but solve it. Do you stand by that? Walden: I do. Building the number of rent stabilized units that we need is achievable. Building the number of market rent apartments that we need is achievable. The problem is that we just don’t have the political leadership that that can help marshal the clan, so to speak, to get it done. And we have made it so difficult, even to participant to participate in the rent stabilized program for landlords. And that’s one of the reasons that we have a problem that no one really understands how big, the problem is, but landlords ,rather than renting apartments after long-term tenants leave, often just locking the door because there’s not enough profit in the rent stabilized program anymore for that to justify capital improvements that are necessary to bring apartments up to code because the code is becoming more complicated all the time. We can tackle this in a number of different ways. First of all, we just have to get an inventory of the number of warehoused apartments that there are and come up with a plan to get those apartments back online. And the range of apartments: I’ve seen estimates that it’s somewhere between 40 and 90,000 units. Now we need 50,000 a year, and there are somewhere between 40 and thou and 90,000 units sitting there vacant. That seems like a terrible policy to me. And we can do things like give supports to landlords. We can do the repairs for them. We can waive certain code requirements if they’re not related to health and safety there are things that we can do to help get those units back online. Gurian: So let me just interrupt you for a second there. Wherever in that range the number falls, the number of warehoused apartments, you’re not suggesting that all of that is attributable to landlords for whom the costs of bringing them up to code or renovating them is too much. There’s, there are some of those units that are being held off the market hoping for a friendlier system of rent regulation to come along or, hoping to be able to sell the building. I’m asking you if you agree that there’s a blend of factors to explain why apartments are warehoused. Walden: I’m sure every landlord has has reasons and I’m not trying to say that there aren’t other possible reasons other than the obvious, but the one that I’ve heard repeatedly as I’ve gone around and met with landlords in rent stabilized buildings, is the primary reason that they close the door is because the return on investment is not sufficient given how low they think the rents are, given what they think the rent should be, that they can re recap the amount of investments that are necessary, even with the adjustments that they get for capital improvements. Now, whether that’s true or not, I don’t know. There’s, the thing that is surprising to me is that we don’t even have the data telling us precisely how many rent stabilized units are warehoused. Given where we are in terms of this being a crisis, that seems to be a way that the city has completely fallen down and not treated this as a serious crisis because it wouldn’t be an arduous task, but a very fruitful task to actually do an inventory of all of the warehouse departments so that we have an accurate count. But whatever the reason… Gurian: I think quite I think that you very well may get broad agreement on the — not on the solutions — but on the utility of careful. Inventory of those apartments. And we’ll come back to this issue, but… Walden: Can I just say one thing? Gurian: Yeah, go ahead. Walden: There’s a related problem, right? The related problem is, okay, we have a certain number of warehoused apartments. We don’t know how many there are. There’s another problem in the rent stabilized system that no one wants to talk about. And that’s that there are people living in rent-stabilized buildings that have no earthly reason to be there. That they, they’re, they can afford market rents. They inherited the units from some other relative that did need the program. And the reason that they’re permitted to stay there is because there’s no means testing. And I it’s always been a head scratcher to me why tenant groups would not support means testing because if you had means testing and there were people that clearly did not need rent-stabilized units, then those people could be moved out to get market rate apartments, and that would open up a unit for someone who really needed it. So there are all, there are a number of problems like this that have just been seemingly eternal problems that restrict our ability to match needy people with the housing that, that that is required.
Gurian: I think implicit in your statement is an idea that rent stabilization was intended to be for the needy as opposed to something that stabilized the housing market so that a broad swath of New Yorkers would be able to afford it. It’s also the case — I don’t mean to go on here — but I looked up very carefully into this and, over, over the decades, the answer from landlords has not been get out the person who doesn’t need it — to use the terms that you described — and bring in someone else who does need it, but rather get out the person who doesn’t need it, and then decontrol the unit so no one who needs it would be able to have it.
Walden: I’m not sure that’s possible after the 2019 law but, be that as it may, I’m guessing that you and I both agree that if there’s a tenant that’s making a million dollars a year, that person has no earthly business in a rent stabilized apartment. That apartment should go to someone who who can’t afford a market rate apartment. So I didn’t go back to look at the legislative history of the original bill, so you may be right that there was some more ethereal reason for it. My understanding of the rent stabilization program was it was designed for people that wouldn’t qualify for public housing but they needed some sort of rent stabilization. Obviously, that there was a rent controlled cohort of apartments, and now that has dwindled because the buildings have largely been decommissioned. There’s still a small stock of them. But my understanding of the rent stabilization program, at least as it’s intended right now, is it is for people that are not at the level that they need public housing, but they’re at the level that they need supports. Gurian: I think you’d have, I think you’d have significant pushback on that. And the only reason that buildings that have gone up in the last 51 years are in rent stabilization is if landlords have taken advantage of some city or state tax break. I did want I, there’s a little bit of a diversion from where I thought we were going to be, but it’s interesting and important. What I don’t hear you factoring in is the idea of the apartment being someone’s home and the expectation that someone has that, regardless of their circumstances, if their circumstances turn out so that they are earning more money, that would be a reason that they would give up their home or should be obliged to give up their home. Walden: I don’t mean to get too metaphysical on you here, but… Gurian: That’s fine. Get as metaphysical as you’d like. Walden: We’re all gonna die someday. There’s private right of ownership when people rent an apartment, they don’t own it. And so of course it, it is their home for the period of time that they rent it. But if we want a society that has a solid safety net we can’t be providing social welfare to millionaires. That is that is that it is, from my perspective, it is a terrible thing given the fact that we start with homeless people. Then we have people that are that are partially housed in shelters. Then we have then we have the NYCHA community and then we have the rent stabilized community. So we have all these people that are housing- insecure. And it seems like a terrible policy to me to let a millionaire, under any circumstances, participate in what is essentially a system where they’re getting some sort of welfare. Now, in this circumstance, the kind of the welfare is based on a private landlord who owns the building and that and that building now participates in a program that is intended to give people support so that they can have a home for the period that they live there. And the millionaire can afford a home somewhere else. So I, I don’t know why this would be a very controversial idea. To me it’s simply common sense that in a place where we have too few rent stabilized units for the number of people that need them, that we would have means testing so that those people that could afford market rents would move somewhere else. So I just think that’s good policy. Gurian: How many apartments do you think you’d free up if you were able to identify all the millionaires in rent stabilized units and, cause them to be moved out at the end of their leases. Walden: Nobody has looked at that data because we don’t keep track of it because there’s no means testing. So we have a cart and a horse problem. But think of it this way, it’s not even just millionaires, right? The median income in the city is, I think it’s $60,000. Even though that is a completely inflated number because the average median income is calculated including three counties in Westchester, which always confounds me. I don’t understand why HUD imposed that the, that seems like just tweaking the numbers up, but it’s also a citywide number. So the people that are in rent stabilized units in Queens are not making nearly the income as people that live in rent stabilized buildings as a general matter in Manhattan. So that, that’s why, from an equity perspective, I think that there’s a much better way to structure the system. Now, I can’t do this as mayor, but it’s still, from my perspective, a sensible policy to have. So we’ve heard a lot… Gurian: I want to talk about some, I wanna talk about some changes to rent stabilization you have in your plan, but you brought up that million dollar number and we don’t we don’t have the data on it, but do you suspect, are you anticipating that if there were a census taken that you would find a lot of millionaires in rent stabilized housing and the amongst the close to million units that there are? Walden: So all I can say is that there is data on income levels and the city publishes that data. You’ve seen the data as well as I have. And they essentially the data is kept up to a certain level. I can’t remember what the level is, but it’s something in the hundred thousands. I have to go back to refresh my recollection, but we have no idea, and it’s not the threshold for rent stabilization should not be a million dollars. It should be lower than that because if someone is making half a million dollars a year, they can clearly afford a rents a market rate apartment somewhere in the five boroughs. So I don’t know how because there’s no data on this that I’ve ever seen, I don’t know how many units, but it would shock me if it wasn’t at least 5% of the million. Because the, everyone has a right to to essentially deed that, not deed, but to transfer to a relative. The rules around what relative can take it are very are very flexible. And there’s some of these apartments that have been passed down through a couple generations. So again, I don’t want, I hate to speculate, but given the fact that this is an issue that’s been covered by the media and there are a number of examples there, and there’s clearly no guard guardrails on the problem, it would surprise me if it was lower than 5%. And if we had those 5% right, 5% of a million that, that would be one year’s worth of rent stabilized units that we could return to people who need them. Gurian: It could be that the guardrails are landlords who were eager to get tenants out, particularly those who are not following the succession rights. But I do want to get to what you call truly… Walden: But Craig, how will that help based on the 2019 law, how will that help them? If they get a tenant out it still has to be a rent stabilized apartment. So there’s the, whatever the incentives might have been before the 2019 law, unless I’m misunderstanding something, I thought the 2019 law basically removed that incentive
Gurian: The incentive to get the incentive to get somebody out to be able to have bonus rent increases. I thought that your concern was people who had too high an income to be in the apartment, but I would like to turn to what you describe as truly affordable housing. Walden: Wait, can I just stop you for one second? Gurian: Yeah. Walden: I just wanted to point your, direct your attention to one thing, which is something that hasn’t really gotten a lot of attention in my campaign for reasons that I don’t quite understand. Walden: But you do know that I put out a bill of rights for New York City? Gurian: I do. Walden: Okay, so one of, one of the things that’s in that Bill of Rights has to do with housing, and I thought that would be particularly important for your viewers. It is the right to safe, secure, and a habitable dwelling. So I really do care about about people having a roof over their head, a private space to raise their kids or to enjoy their quiet time without the the issues that we see in shelters that we see in in some housing that is communal. And, it’s one of the reasons that I created the Bill of Rights and I put that specifically in it. Gurian: Thank you. The, your plan has something in excess of 40,000, 42,000 in change in terms of units of what you call truly affordable housing per year. And one part of your plan is has to do with city owned buildings, and that’s a program whereby you transfer 25 city owned buildings each with an average of 300 units to developers for free in exchange for 30% of the units being truly affordable.
Have, did I get that right?
Walden: So you lost me for one second, because again, if we’re talking about the number of units that we need and you combine the, what I will call the truly affordable units with the rebuilt NYCHA, the number that I get to is 50 55,000 from the plan that we have now. So just, just so that we’re clear about that. Gurian: Okay. I may have an addition problem. I’m looking at page 38 of your plan” Tool One: city owned buildings program. Objective one: each year identify 25 city owned vacant properties that average 300 apartments.
And you describe on page 35 is those are transferred to developers without cost in exchange for 30% of the units. So my first question is on this is have you identified 25 such buildings for year one or, a hundred such buildings over the course of your first term?
Walden: No. When we prepared this plan, we did identify a number of buildings, but, but I didn’t put them in the plan because there was some research that was necessary to make sure that they were, that they that there weren’t other reasons that they could not be transferred. So certainly the kind of the next phase of a plan like this would have to be for each of the tools that’s used to identify. Now there is a pretty robust tool on the city’s website that does identify all of the city buildings and decommissioned city buildings and city buildings that are available for sale. It’s a very, especially the last category is very difficult to get specifics. And some of these are not buildings, but there’s city owned plots of land. And so there’s definitely more work that needs to be done to identify it. But we, I, but what we did was based on reasonable assumptions about decommissioned buildings and buildings where we were able to identify that there were vacant floors to come up with the, what was, from our perspective, a reasonable estimate of the number of properties that there would be. Now to be clear, this is one of those tools that is finite, right? We can’t give away all city buildings. So in any event… Gurian: So I just wanna stop for a few seconds just on an arithmetic issue. The 25 a year times an average of 300 is 7,500 units, and 30% of that tru, that truly affordable are 2,250. It says the plan says that the truly affordable a year is 9,000. And you may not know this the reason for this disparity offhand, that sounds like that’s the, that works out to be a four year number not a one year number.
Walden: Yeah, I would I can’t, I can’t comment on that right now because I would need to go back to the calculations that we did when we were confirming the numbers. Gurian: Okay. The broader picture though, is I need you to explain to the audience what truly affordable means. One piece of it is 25% of median income, and you’ve already adverted to the problem you find with it being a citywide plus Westchester median income. So it would be 25%, no more than 25% of borough median income. The part I wanna make sure I’m getting correct is what happens after five years?
Because during those five years, the rent is flat, right? Those first five years, what, what happens after the, what happens after the five years? Walden: There’ll be a process. I didn’t, there’s a hundred page plan, so I couldn’t go into every single detail of it. But but, whoever is responsible in my administration for implementing this program, I wanted to lead flexibility to to look at the situation on the ground. And it’s, and with all of these things, I want it to be as bespoke as possible so that people don’t get trapped up in arbitrary rules. So if there are people that have a need to stay in rent stabilized units, I, one of my goals is to try to give people support so that they can eventually transition out into other kinds of housing so that there is more, a more dynamic rent stabilized system. But if there are people that still need it then I’m sure the rules will permit it to stay. After five years there may be increases that are required for those people, but that’ll all be identified in the contract. Gurian: I’m a little confused here because I could have sworn that I read that for some tenants it would be built in cost of living and building expense. Walden: I think that was for the elderly. I think that was for elderly tenants. Gurian: And then for public servants and young professionals, which is a sort of a, I don’t know if you call it a specialized population or special groups. It after five years, it’s 80% of market rate and a hundred percent after year eight. What happens? Walden: Again, those are goals. And the, and I built in flexibility there for exceptions depending on their circumstances. But obviously with respect to young professionals or I’d say, I say young professionals ‘cause there wasn’t another term for it. It will incorporate people that are pursuing vocational training. We need more people that are plumbers and carpenters and and auto mechanics. And I didn’t mean to exclude them by using the word professionals, but they’re the goal here should be to give them a period of time as they’re starting their career so that they know that they can afford their rent because it’s only 25% of the average median income for their borough. There’ll be a specific, rents will be different in each of the boroughs based on a locally calculated AMI. And then they will know based on the contract that they basically have a five year window and they may get an exception, but that they’ve gotta, work and save to be able to go somewhere else if they are not afforded the exception. Now, whether or not this plan keeps that that’s gonna depend on the facts and circumstances. Some, something this ambitious and that has never been tried before. So we want to build in flexibility so that we can learn intelligently and make decisions or changes based on current market conditions and needs and also factor tenant needs into the equation. So though. Obviously this is just a very, there’s so much detail behind in this report that everything is described on a couple of PowerPoint slides. There’s gonna have to be a lot more detail built into the plan. Gurian: Understood. Let me just ask you one other thing about it. For that tenant who’s had that glide path for a number of years that you described and either takes off as you hope and buys a condo or is not able to afford it any longer once it becomes market rate for that family and has to go elsewhere: what happens with the next tenant to the next tenant who comes into that unit? Is the next tenant getting that at 25% of borough median income? Walden: Yes.
Gurian: I wanna go back to our discussion on… Walden: Wait, just so I’m clear. So Jane Doe is there when the building’s built. Jane Doe goes through five years and she’s not quite ready. So she takes advantage of the 80% to give herself another year that’s not market. And in year seven she says, “I’m gonna move out.” Then John Doe moves in. You’re asking does John Doe get reset to the baseline five years? Gurian: Where is his rent in relationship either to what Jane had been paying to start with, or what the market rate rent for Jane was in year seven? Walden: Yeah. So this is where I thought, I didn’t wanna be unclear about this. So John Doe would get 25% of the then existing AMI. So if AMI has increased borough wide, then John Doe would get 25% of the AMI, John Doe would not inherit the rent this dollar rent that Jane Doe paid based on, I assume, a different AMI that was now seven years old. Gurian: It would be 2033 AMI, not 2026 AMI. Walden: Yes. Gurian: A very significant portion of the projected affordable unit does come from NYCHA infill and expansion of NYCHA projects through full block development. Walden: Don’t use the word infill. That’s a terrible word. That’s terrible word. No, I’m kidding. I’m goofing around. For, but for your viewers, if any of them are following along, we’re now talking about we’re now talking about slide Hold on, slide… Gurian: This is all audio, so that’s not gonna, that’s, Walden: Oh, I’m sorry. I thought it was video and audio. Sorry. Okay. Gurian: What would, what’s your preference to infill. Walden: Infill, infill was a program that that where essentially you would take parking lots or green spaces and build buildings on them. So it is, okay, here’s your community. Your community is gonna continue to exist as it is, we’re gonna build a building in your community that for, whatever it is, whether it’s market rent, or it’s it, whatever it is. And we’re gonna use the proceeds of that, or some of the proceeds as it turns out, to make repairs to the existing buildings. That’s my recollection of what infill was. This is a totally different model, right? This is a fundamentally different model where you are taking the existing community, dismantling it, and in its place it will be a, an economically integrated block. You’re gonna take, what are these segregated communities where there’s a number of buildings and turn them into full city blocks. So in the Pink Houses, for example, some of those blocks are huge. You will get four or five blocks of normal size, but maybe not four or five, three or four normal size blocks out of what constitutes one large piece of property. Where there are, five or six NYCHA buildings that are built adjacent to one another. And I can explain how that program would go, because I certainly anticipate that it’s gonna be with collaboration from the NYCHA community and it will require their consent. And I can explain that whole process if you’re interested. Gurian: So the first thing I was interested in is this is something that you describe as a pilot program. It’s a pretty robust pilot.
Walden: Yes, it’s, yes, it is. Gurian: I understand the, let me pose the question this way. Is the full block aspect a matter of dealing with property that already exists, or does it require in some cases the acquisition of additional property?
Walden: I can’t speak to the entire NYCHA portfolio, right? I would say that for the mo for, this is not true every single NYCHA community. There are some NYCHA communities that are very small. They’re just a couple of buildings, but that’s the exception, not the rule. So as a general matter, just think take the Pink Houses, for example. I can’t remember how many buildings there are, but I think it’s something north of 20. So there are 20 buildings that are on large parcels of property that are larger than a normal city block. So the idea is that you will take the parcels and you will end up at the end of the process with however many city blocks, normal size, city blocks, you can fit in the parcels that exist now on the NYCHA campus, on that NYCHA campus. So I’m not singling Pink Houses out because they obviously, they’ve consented or anything. That was the most recent one that I visited. And it’s the one that I spoke to their attendance association about their perspectives on this. Gurian: This is helpful. I was just trying to get my own head around the fact, because there are variations in the NYCHA portfolio, that as you are contemplating it, you are talking about a change from super blocks into normal size city blocks. And could you just take me through some of the basics of a, assuming that there is consent, what happens to the existing buildings, what happens to the existing tenants? What’s the, like what’s the timeline, what’s the cost? And you have a minute. No two minutes to do that.
Walden: That’s funny. Okay let me, I’ll start with first principles and I’ll try to give you as much detail as I can in two minutes. So it’s important, first of all to understand the way the consent is gonna work because there’s a lot of consternation about the consent that was obtained for the one project that’s going on right now that’s similar to this, but very different at Chelsea, at the Chelsea Elliott houses, where there’s a large group of tenants that feel as though they can send it to one thing and something different is happening. So the way that my plan would work is, first of all we would come up with a sketch, if you will, of how many city blocks we would want to create out of whatever the NYCHA community was, and and then we would do an analysis of the number of buildings that could be built on each of the newly created bo blocks from the parcel. And then we would put out, a a request for proposal. We would get a developer, the developer would agree that as an initial step for that community that they would build a prototype apartment. So that literally there’d be a truck that would come with an apartment, and it would be essentially like a four family apartment, I’m sorry, a four member apartment four person family apartment. And the entire community would get the opportunity to go in there and see the additional space because my goal, I think was a 10% increase in the size. They would see the appliances, the finishes, the layout and everything, and the community would actually see a version of the apartment that they would be getting. After that happens, then consent would be sought. Assuming that consent was obtained, then we would use a build-first program to make sure that people weren’t dislocated. So the first building would have to be a replacement NYCHA building. That building would be built as a general matter because the NYCHA buildings are relatively low. These structures would be much larger, they’d be much taller. And and then. A number of people from the existing buildings would be moved into the new building and then those buildings that are now vacant would be demolished. And that’s the way that the development would go. The developer would have the ability to build some non NYCHA buildings as they were progressing through to build the NYCHA buildings. So we have not yet done an analysis of how long it will take. It’s gonna be very different depending on the size of the block and the location of the NYCHA community. There’s gonna be some that are gonna be much more amenable to luxury housing because of their proximity to Manhattan and others that may be less attractive for that kind of building that will represent a different kind of return on investment for the developers. So we have to work out all of those circumstances. Did I provide you with enough detail? Gurian: I’d like to do another hour on it, but for now, we have to turn to a couple of other things, and I did wanna just mention a couple of other housing things and ask your view about it. You do have a highly negative view of the 2019 rent reforms or rent changes.
Is that fair? Walden: I would say that my perspective on that law is negative. Gurian: Okay. So are there any of the changes that were made in 2019 that you would keep?
Walden: I can’t answer that question intelligently because as I sit here right now, I don’t remember all of them, so I don’t want to disparage the entire bill. But what I can say is the way that we first of all, as a general matter, I don’t think that Albany should be telling New York City how to run its rent stabilization program. I understand it’s a creation of state law. The, there Albany’s supposed to be acting for the entire state. Other cities in New York state are very different than ours. We have a much more significant problem. We need more flexibility and self-determination, and I think that this whole thing would be a lot easier if we had more local control over the entire housing portfolio. And as mayor, that’s something that I’m going to be advocating very hard for in Albany, at least as a pilot program, to suspend some of these laws so that we can get ahead of the problem so that we can actually solve the housing crisis. Too many of these bills are laden with things that are not issues that are specifically related to bringing overall rents down. My goal is to create so much housing that we’re, we have downward pressure on pricing and so that the entire rent rental community experiences decreases over time. Sorry, I’m just gonna, I’m gonna take a second and sit down. But go ahead. I can talk to you. Gurian: Okay. Do whatever it is you need to do for your back. One element that in that occurred in 2019 was requiring a much higher percentage of tenants in occupancy to agree before to, to sign up before a building would be able to be converted to a condominium. Do you have a view on that change? Walden: I haven’t studied that change closely enough but I’m i’ll but just to. To kinda lay this out there I’m a gen, I’m generally of a view that the government should be altering people’s property rights at, in a minimalist way as little as possible. And that what you’ve just described, I don’t remember reading that from the bill. Obviously this I did the work on this plan months and months ago. So I read the 2019 bill several times. I just don’t remember that. But that doesn’t sound like a provision that if I had complete control, that I would be in favor of. And I don’t think it’s pro-tenant because there are circumstances where we need those buildings. If we want the best, lemme put it this way. If we want the best system we can, we need dynamic stock. We need to consistently be building rent stabilized buildings and decommissioning some of the older buildings where there are worse tenants. There are, I’m not worse tenants, worse landlords. There are deteriorating conditions. One of the beauties of the free market is that if those buildings are released from the program or they get turned into condominiums there will be more capital investments in them because there’ll be more up upside in terms of real estate appreciation. And I believe that it is an affirmatively good thing. If we really get this plan cooking and we can exceed 50,000 units to try to move people from the current buildings that often are of poor repair and put them in new apartments at less rent. That to me is a win. If we can afford that and we can arrange the development, so the developer makes enough ROI. We have a managing agent that’s keeping this new building regulated. It’s a, it’s gonna be a green building, so it will have less of an impact on our carbon footprint, and we’re getting people from old housing stock into newer housing stock. There’s literally no downside in that sort of a system, and I think that would be a much better free market way to to remove a lot of regulations and let the market work. Gurian: I know you’ve been talking a lot about free market and the free market candidates and being one of the free market candidates. But one of the things that strikes me about your housing plan is that there’s a very large governmental role. And I’m wondering if the difference between and among candidates isn’t so much free market versus non-free market, but rather, in each case, how much of the risk and how much of the benefit does the governmental partner have as opposed to the private participant?
Walden: I’m not sure I completely understood there. Sounds like there’s a question in there, but I’m not really sure that I understood it, to tell you the truth. Gurian: Okay. Let me take a, let me take another try at it. It’s not like you’re just, you’re describing this all being done by private developers. You in fact say explicitly in your plan that there is a lot that is being given, to developers, you feel that it’s justified.
So it’s not just private developers on their own, there’s a significant governmental role. So it would seem like.. Walden: But only as a regulator. So only as a regulator. Gurian: So what about the giving, what about the giving of city owned land and buildings? Walden: Ed, you remember Ed Koch did that for a dollar, right? His, he, how many parcels of land did he give away for a dollar? The governmental role here is to spur development. You can spur development by reducing the costs of building, and you can reduce the cost of building in three ways. There are more ways than this, but as a high, at a high level, there are three ways. You can give them land or sell them land at significantly below market costs. You can, streamline regulations so that buildings go up faster and there’s less red tape, or you can give tax incentives. What we’ve been doing is to give very large tax incentives. And what’s the problem with tax incentives? The problem with tax incentives is you’re essentially selling your future because you’re saying we’re not, we don’t have to give you the money now, but if you build now, then we’ll give you these benefits over years. And at on scale, all that means is there’s gonna be less tax revenue in years down the road. So the, what I think of the is of the beauty of this system is that you’re removing some of the government’s some of the government involvement with this continuing subsidization, is that the right word? Gurian: Subsidization. Yes. Walden: By subsidization. Thank you. By giving free land upfront, significantly streamlining the regulatory approval process so that buildings can get built quicker in certain circumstances, providing bridge loans to developers that can’t raise the capital right away, or that they get to a p place in a development and they start running low on capital for some reason. And you trade kind of bridge loans for city equity in the upside of the market rate stuff, so that the government’s actually making money by lending money in certain circumstances where there’s, it’s a good credit risk and relying on tax incentives less. Now, in terms of it administering the relationship between the landlord and the tenant, that’s largely gonna be the defined by the contract, right? There’s gonna be a standard contract that will be part of the RFP that the developer will have to live with. And if the developer sells the development or sells buildings, those contracts are gonna, the contractual requirement is gonna flow with the title so that the contract has to stay the same, or whatever changes there are to the contract that the city wants, the developer’s gonna have to go along with that. So I’m not sure what you mean when you say the risk to the government as opposed to the risk to the tenants, did you say?
Are you following me so far? Am I being obtuse?
Gurian: You described some billions of dollars of increased economic value that gets added and you propose to tax 5% of that. What I was really… Walden: The value added tax for the kids in poverty program. Yeah. Yep. Gurian: My question really had to do with the fact that there are two, that there are two players who are contributing here. And it’s not like it’s all, it’s not like it’s all market or it’s all government. They’re collaborating. And different candidates have different views as to which parties get more benefits from the transactions.
That was what I was trying to ask you about, but, if you had something else to add on that, we should do that. Otherwise, I had one more on housing. Walden: Yeah, I was gonna respond to what you just said, but I don’t need to, I look at it a little bit differently, which is the government’s just a gateway to a program that is largely gonna be a contract between two private parties, a tenant and a landlord. So the government will oversee that to make sure that the contract is being abided and that tenants aren’t being abused, and landlords aren’t suffering from the kinds of non-payment that happen in many situations right now. So there would be balance. Gurian: A relatively small part of your plan involves what you call targeted upzoning which would require community board approval. And my question for you on this is, “How do you have that kind of system where you don’t simply have a replication of what’s happened over decades, where there are community districts that are both deeply racially segregated and deeply resistant to any upzone?”
Walden: Okay. I’m sorry. So you, there was a lot packed in there. They are segregated and they don’t want development. Gurian: Yeah. Walden: Yeah. Okay. Give them incentives. Talk to them, try and incentivize them in other ways, have a conversation. What I don’t want to do is I don’t want to say we need more housing and so I’m gonna dump it in a community that doesn’t want it. Now, I might be able to incentivize them to want it by saying something like. ” We haven’t dealt with your sewers for years. We’ll give you a sewer upgrade.” ” Your public school doesn’t have a playing field for people to play.” You have to attract, you have to get kids in a bus to go play field hockey. “We’ll build a we’ll build a field for you.” So there are conversations that can happen, but at the end of the day, if there aren’t incentives that the city can afford, that the community wants, I think that there should be more local control over development. So that if there are communities that really don’t want it, the only way, then you can deal there are other ways to deal with segregation issues. It’s not just by by having ultra large buildings. And. I’ll use as many levers as I can to try to desegregate as much as the city as possible. My hope is that a large part of the segregation is in NYCHA communities. This whole plan with respect to NYCHA was was what I think is a clever a clever way to incentivize ‘cause there are some NYCHA communities that were very against some of the other projects to use land that they considered to be their land. I don’t mean that they meant that they own it, but that they should have a significant voice, which I agree with since I was the lawyer for the entire NYCHA Pro portfolio in that 2018 case that I brought. But I’m hoping that people will choose development over segregation when they see the quality of the buildings that other people are living in, and all of the benefits that I think that we can give them in terms of more amenities, better apartments, larger apartments, no maintenance problems living in a green building, having the opportunity to actually be the managing agent themselves so that they have careers themselves to, and for a number of them, as I’m sure I’m gonna have a rent to own program. The city’s had one on the books for years, but it very, it, it’s done very little in, in terms of actually placing people in private homes. I wanna have a program where they can actually own the NYCHA building, the NYCHA apartment that they’re living in. Or they can get what is essentially a voucher-like credit to be able to move somewhere else with a family so that they can own themselves. Gurian: I wouldn’t disagree for a moment about NYCHA being deeply segregated, but a very significant part of the city’s segregation exists in White, in, in White Brooklyn, in White Queens and White Staten Island. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the suburb of Pound Ridge in Westchester. Very wealthy community that doesn’t have a sewer system. And they don’t want to have a sewer system. Walden: How many houses are there? Gurian: They’re it’s three acres zoning, and that’s the, and that’s the way they like it. If you could stick with me for a few minutes, I wanted to turn to to a couple of civil rights things. Walden: Sure. Gurian: And I wanted to, I’ll give you a very specific scenario right at the beginning of your term. January 5th. So I’ve given you an opportunity to celebrate. And it’s a, it’s the first, it’s the first weekday, I think. So at 5:00 PM on January 5th, several hundred protestors identifying themselves quote anti Zionists occupy Grand Central Station for Palestine. And they block access to shops, commuter trains, and the subway. And point out quote there a Zionist on the MTAs board. What, if anything, does Mayor Walden do and say? Walden: Mayor Walden lets the police commissioner deal with the situation and remove the protestors from places where they’re blocking egress, which is illegal and hopefully gets lots of cooperation from the protestors because we all believe in the First Amendment and whether it’s Palestine or anything else, people have a right to protest. If they’re protesting and they haven’t gotten a permit, that’s a real problem. There’s a lot of facts and circumstances there that may lead me to be more active in in collaborating with the police commissioner and their, as a general matter, I’m gonna leave it to her or him to handle in a way that’s appropriate.
Gurian: Do you imagine a public statement that you’d be making as mayor under the facts that I described?
Walden: Let me get the issue this way.
I don’t believe in false choices. So to me it’s a false choice that we’re making oftentimes with the rights of protestors versus the rights of the rest of the community. So there are time, place, and manner restrictions that the Supreme Court allows on exercise of First Amendment rights. One of the problems is that we haven’t really clearly defined time, place, and manner restrictions. And for those of your listeners that don’t understand this, it means you can protest, you can use your First Amendment rights, but you can’t scream fire in a crowded movie theater, right? So there are, cities can keep themselves safe by saying, okay, A, you need to get a permit. Here’s what the permit requires. B, you’re limited to this number of people. C, you have to, go in and go out in these certain timeframes. D you’re not allowed to have weapons. E if you leave a mess, you’ve gotta clean it up and if you don’t clean it up, you’re gonna get charged for it. So these are what I will call time, place and manner restrictions. So one of the things that I want to do to try to deescalate right some of these situations is to have really clear time, place and manner restrictions and to make sure that we carefully vet people that are applying for protests in some of these very charged situations so that we’re not having people come here just to foment anger, unrest and violence. And unfortunately, I think that we’ve seen a lot of that nationwide where special interest groups, whether it’s the Proud Boys or it is some other group on the other side of the aisle are trying to create unsafety drama, anger, chaos and I, while respecting the First Amendment, I think that a more clearly defined set of time, place, and manner restrictions that everyone has to abide by at the time that they get the permit will help a lot and create more clarity.
Was that helpful? Gurian: That is, that I think clearly sets out your view. Yes. Last one on this second and last one on this. I think most people would agree that fighting domestic violence is a central part of a civil rights agenda. And I don’t know how frequently you’ve been asked about this in the last few days, but on a podcast — Immigrantly — in 2020, Assemblyman Mamdani said: “And there are so many responsibilities we have given to police that frankly should have nothing to do with their department. Homeless person is on a train. They do not need a stranger with a gun to come and resolve that situation. If somebody is jaywalking, if somebody is going through domestic violence, there are so many different situations that would be far better handled by people trained to deal with those specific situations as opposed to an individual with a gun who has received quite a limited amount of training in general, but also with regards to these kinds of situations.”
Talking now, not of homeless New Yorkers or jaywalkers, but of victims of domestic violence. What is your view on… Walden: My God, Craig. There’s like a million things that I wanna say about this, but I’m gonna limit it in the interest of time since we’re over time to this. Police are trained to deal with domestic violence situations. They do it every single day. They do it very well. They do it across the city. Of course, that doesn’t mean that situations don’t get out of control because people are people. So when Mr. Mamdani says that police aren’t trained to do this, that, or the other thing, I don’t think he has the first clue what the police training regimen is at the academy and after the academy. But I think it is a ridiculous notion that you’re gonna send unarmed people into domestic violence situations in circumstances where you don’t know whether or not one or both of the people have weapons and expect a good outcome.
Gurian: Thank you. Lastly, and I do appreciate your spending this extra time with me after a very long interview, but I did wanna ask you about this because when you got into the race, a central point that you were selling in intentional contrast with the incumbent was integrity in government, yes? Walden: I’m not selling it, but yes, I believe… Gurian: Presenting. Walden: Yes. Yes. Gurian: And you’ve also made a point of rebuking the influence of donations from these independent expenditure committees, of which there was a ton given for the campaign of former Governor Cuomo? Walden: I did more than that. I disavowed them. And even though I’ve got plenty of wealthy contributors that would’ve loved to start a PAC for me, I said that having an election that is untainted by the public received stench of big money and the influence that carries, that I was going to take a principled view, even though it was gonna make my road to City Hall more difficult.
Gurian: I guess that you’ve gotten calls recently saying, “are you sure about that?” Walden: No, no comment. Gurian: You’re, you’ve now and this has gotten prominent play proposed a way for what you call the free market candidates. Everyone except Assemblyhman Mamdani to consolidate behind. One candidate after a poll in the fall determines which candidate is the strongest and informally before today, and I think formally today Cuomo has signed on to that. I think that you’ve said that whether or not the poll you described with everybody participating exists, if it turns out to be mid-September and you’re not in the lead of the free market candidates. Do you drop out then? Do you drop out if it’s you’re not in the lead only if there is an agreement amongst the four of you? Walden: The pledge that you’re talking about, just for your listeners that don’t understand, we have a math problem on in that is the creation in my view of what the Democrats did during rank choice voting. So as general matter, one candidate can’t endorse or support another candidate. If that happens, then the general rule is that you have to repay the public matching funds. The Campaign Finance Board in its wisdom decided to essentially exempt the Democrats from that in the context of rank choice voting, so that Democrat “A” could say, oh yeah, vote for me, but give the second rank or the third rank to these other people. And from my perspective, that’s an essentially a level of engineering that is the functional equivalent of endorsing another candidate because you are using your voice to say, even if I lose, I want you to vote for the, this other person. So it’s an exception. All I’ve done is to say, with respect to the non-Democratic candidates, the non-majority candidates, we should have the benefit of the same rule. And the reason is because I see that I personally believe that Zohran Mamdani is an existential threat to New York City, and I can explain why. He’s perfectly affable person, very gifted politician. But but I believe that we need a one-on-one race for centrist Democrats and Republicans to be able to have a candidate that will then compete with Mr. Mamdani at the end of the race in a one-on-one and not permit the, what I will call the free market or the centrist vote to get split among four candidates, which is going to assure Mr. Mamdani a path to victory. So the, if the other four candidates, if the other three candidates, sorry, take the pledge. Then we will have a poll. It won’t necessarily be in September, it might be in early October, but I left the I left flexibility there, hoping to have collaboration with all of the candidates so that we could work out a compromise or have a third party work out a compromise that was fair to everyone. That way if if I’m not the front runner at that point, and obviously I’m polling lower than other candidates, but if I’m not the front runner, then yes, of course after that poll, I would do what I’ve already said I was gonna do in writing, and I would drop out and I will add, it doesn’t matter what the spread is between the front runner and me. So I’m not gonna be the one that says it’s only 1%, and that might mean that I could really beat you. And polls are sometimes wrong. To me, the city’s interests are more important than my political ambitions, if you characterize my race that way, which I wouldn’t, but I proposed this. Cuomo has now signed onto it, but I wouldn’t exactly say he’s signed up to to it the way that I conceived it, but at least he’s now said very clearly, including in a video that he supports the idea. And now we have to wait for the other two. Gurian: And what happens if you don’t get the other two: the center is just continues to be split. Walden: I’m going to, I’m gonna make that decision when it comes. I try to solve problems as quickly and as thoroughly as I can. Right now. I recognized that there was this spoiler situation that could be a bad thing. And so I took the initiative to come up with a plan that would solve that problem if everyone co cooperated. If people don’t cooperate, then I’ll make a decision at the right time. I will say to you what I’ve said to plenty of other people, I don’t want to be a spoiler. I’m not making a promise or a commitment. I’m just telling you where my head is at. If we’re in the, if we’re in the end of October and and and I’m polling at 6% or 10% and there’s no possible route, then I’m gonna go back to the CFB and try to work out something so that I can either withdraw or throw my support behind someone else. Because I, no matter what happens to me in this race, I will not be the person that contributes to essentially letting Zohran Mamdani walk into City Hall because of a split vote that I contributed to. So it becomes more difficult if my polling is 1% at that point, but I’ll just have to make the best decision that I can, because I could imagine a scenario where I wasn’t in first place in that scenario, but the front runner and I had both gotten ahead of Mr. Momani, right? So we were pulling at 40% and 30%, and Momani is pulling at 20%, which is a real possibility in my estimation, because the Democrats did a terrible job vetting him and getting opposition research out about the very extreme positions that he took. Some of that stuff started breaking at the very end of the Democratic primary cycle. And now a lot more has come out that is much worse than some of the opposition research that, that the media published during the Democratic primary. I’m sorry if that was long-winded, but I wanted to give a full answer Gurian: I appreciate your describing what you’ve decided and what you haven’t decided. I just have this last question on this, which is again, in terms of your original message. Doesn’t potential support for a Cuomo or an Adams undercut that message in some ways? Doesn’t it — leaving aside the separate issue of if you want to poll higher, you have to run against them — but I’m really talking about something else. “Forget about what I said about corruption, about pay to play, about…” Walden: No, don’t forget about that stuff. Don’t. Let me address it directly. Gurian: But if forget about it is the wrong word, then the phrase “subordinated” is the right phrase, because you’re saying “subordinate those considerations to stopping the socialist.” Walden: Yeah. So first of all I’ll state it more bluntly than you’re stating it, right? If I were in your position, I’d say “Walden, by supporting people, by potentially supporting people like Cuomo and Adams over Mamdani, doesn’t that denude your own credibility and your own integrity?” I’d say I’d ask it much more bluntly than you’re asking it, and I would say “no, because I didn’t choose these people.” I wish that Michael Bloomberg would run and it would be me and Michael Bloomberg against Zohran Mamdani or that we could exhume John McCain and have John McCain run or entice any number entice President Obama or someone who I believe has a high degree of integrity and is a centrist to be in this pack. But this pack of people are the pack of people that I have right on the other side. Your question, that question assumes that I view Mamdani as being less corrupt or less compromised than the other candidates. And I don’t see it that way. He’s a very nice guy. You certainly want him in a cocktail party with you. But but he is he has embraced actual terrorists. He has articulated views that, in my view are pure antisemitism. And he has promised as mayor that he’s going to adopt an antisemitic policy. He has he has displayed extreme — it’s not just defund the police — extreme bigotry toward the police at a time that he means to mention or that he means to govern them. And he’s selling people a bill of goods because the promises that he’s making, he could never keep. So that to me is the same recipe for corruption that we’ve seen in every socialist country that has adopted that system. And ultimately, the people that get hurt the most are the voters. So I don’t see Mamdani as being somehow different than the others. But the others haven’t supported terrorists. They haven’t engaged in extreme police bigotry, they haven’t expressed anti-Semitic views. And so on balance, I think that they are a better choice to lead the city of New York than someone that on top of everything else has the thinnest resume of any mayoral candidate in the history of the city of New York. He literally has a pedigree of failure. Did I answer your question? You can’t say that I duck tough questions. , Gurian: Your wishlist for a better field included President Obama the late Senator McCain and former mayor Bloomberg. Any is there any Democratic politician, Democratic Party politician in New York in the last 10 or 15 years that would be on your list as better than the current field? Walden: Hakeem Jeffries?
Gurian: I don’t, I don’t know. You’re asking me if that… Walden: No I didn’t choose, I’m just speaking off the top of my head. It wasn’t like I had that answer planned out. There are plenty of Democrats and plenty of Republicans that I think would be better candidates than the current field. The reason that I, I decided to join as hard of a climb as I knew that it was gonna be is because I fundamentally believe that none of those people should be presidents, should be the mayor of New York City. I’m just saying that from an integrity and from a position of centrist consensus building and unity, that they would be better candidates than the people that are there. Now, I, the reason that I decided to run was because I knew who was going to be in the race eventually. And I fundamentally believe, and this is one of the reasons that I left the Democratic primary, almost 20 the Democratic Party almost 20 years ago and became an independent, is because I think for New York City right now, we need a timeout from the Democratic Party. We need an administration that is focused on not these lightning rod issues that are dividing us nationally and creating tons of acrimony, but we need good government. We need highly capable people who understand the issues themselves, not through a bunch of intermediaries, but understand the issues themselves, can pick the right people to run these agencies that are not cronies or patronage jobs or checking different boxes, but just the best people to get these agencies under control so that we can reduce our budget while providing more services to New Yorkers and providing them with a standard of excellence, not mediocrity.
And I don’t think the Democratic Party can get that done because they all owe each other too many favors and we can, we’ve seen again and again how that takes us down a road that does not serve New Yorkers. Gurian: Jim Walden, thank you very much. Walden: Oh, thank you.
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