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Andrew Yang Starts NYC Mayoral Run With Guaranteed-Income Pledge
Source: Bloomberg
Tech entrepreneur Andrew Yang, a former presidential contender, officially declared his run for New York City mayor. In a campaign video released late Wednesday on Twitter, Yang put forth an agenda that included a guaranteed minimum income, bringing universal high-speed Internet, starting a “people’s bank” and reopening New York City “intelligently” from the pandemic. “I moved to New York City 25 years ago,” he said in the video. “I came of age, fell in love, and became a father here. Seeing our city in so much pain breaks my heart.”
His agenda includes a focus on New York City’s nightlife. On his campaign website, Yang pledges to make permanent outdoor dining, “to-go cocktails” and other temporary measures put in place during the pandemic. He also says he wants to attract so-called TikTok hype houses, where social-media influencers live together in big mansions and shoot videos together. Yang’s basic income program would start by providing $2,000 a year to half a million New Yorkers in extreme poverty. Participants would receive the cash through monthly transfers to a bank account opened in their name at a newly-created “People’s Bank.”
His most detailed policy focuses on reviving the city’s small businesses. He pledged to open 15,000 small businesses by 2022 and also offered a bevy of unconventional ideas, including buying heaters in bulk and then selling them to restaurants that are serving customers in the frigid outdoors as indoor dining remains shut. He also suggested the city make an investment in Cinch Market, a Brooklyn startup that brings together small businesses on one online platform, whose tagline is “Shop Brooklyn Not Bezo$.”
His agenda includes a focus on New York City’s nightlife. On his campaign website, Yang pledges to make permanent outdoor dining, “to-go cocktails” and other temporary measures put in place during the pandemic. He also says he wants to attract so-called TikTok hype houses, where social-media influencers live together in big mansions and shoot videos together. Yang’s basic income program would start by providing $2,000 a year to half a million New Yorkers in extreme poverty. Participants would receive the cash through monthly transfers to a bank account opened in their name at a newly-created “People’s Bank.”
His most detailed policy focuses on reviving the city’s small businesses. He pledged to open 15,000 small businesses by 2022 and also offered a bevy of unconventional ideas, including buying heaters in bulk and then selling them to restaurants that are serving customers in the frigid outdoors as indoor dining remains shut. He also suggested the city make an investment in Cinch Market, a Brooklyn startup that brings together small businesses on one online platform, whose tagline is “Shop Brooklyn Not Bezo$.”
Link to tweet
Link to tweet
Read more: https://www.bloombergquint.com/onweb/andrew-yang-officially-announces-candidacy-for-nyc-mayor
But what's his policy on snow removal?
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Andrew Yang Starts NYC Mayoral Run With Guaranteed-Income Pledge (Original Post)
brooklynite
Jan 2021
OP
NYC Liberal
(20,453 posts)1. "But what's his policy on snow removal?"
I used to live on Bloomberg's street...so we were always the first to be plowed. That was a nice little perk.
NJCher
(43,165 posts)2. one word
yay.
Love this: "Cinch Market, a Brooklyn startup that brings together small businesses on one online platform, whose tagline is “Shop Brooklyn Not Bezo$.”
I heard a radio interview with a candidate a couple days ago, though, and she sounded good, too. I think she was a psychologist in the services at one time.
brooklynite
(96,882 posts)3. The very large Mayoral field
Scott Stringer (City comptroller)
Pet issues: More than pushing for one big idea, Stringer has advocated for an array of causes like affordable housing, gun control, women’s reproductive rights, LGBTQ rights, and campaign-finance reform. Lately it’s felt like his chief purpose in life is to dunk on de Blasio, calling out the mayor with lawsuits, reports, and press releases for botched programs and initiatives.
Positioning: Steady moderate progressivism. He’s attempting to appeal to Democrats seeking an experienced politician while also looking for votes from the party’s progressive wing.
Controversies: Stringer has taken some heat for his record of approving large real-estate projects like Hudson Yards and the expansion of NYU’s campus.
Eric Adams (Brooklyn Borough President)
Pet issues: While serving as the cheerleader-in-chief for Brooklyn, he has cultivated a reputation as a champion for immigrant communities and the needs of small businesses and has been unabashedly pro-development — adapting former Alaska governor Sarah Palin’s “Drill, baby, drill” line into his “Build, baby, build” mantra.
Positioning: As a former cop, he has nuanced views on police reform and can perhaps build a coalition of Black New Yorkers and more conservative white voters. His platform so far has zeroed in on public safety and revitalizing the economy.
Maya Wiley (Senior vice-president of social justice and professor of urban policy at the New School)
Résumé high points: She’s a former top counsel for Mayor Bill de Blasio and is a onetime civil-rights attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. She’s also the former chair of the Civilian Complaint Review Board, the body that weighs claims of misconduct against NYPD officers. She gained a national reputation as a political and legal analyst for MSNBC.
Pet issues: Combating systemic racism and police brutality are her bread and butter.
Positioning: Wiley announced her exploration of a bid for mayor three months after the killing of George Floyd in May and has positioned herself, a Black woman, as an avatar for addressing the city’s racial and economic inequities.
Allies: Wiley has received what is probably the only coveted Trump bump in the mayoral race: Mary Trump, who wrote a tell-all about her uncle, hosted an online fundraiser for Wiley earlier this month.
Shaun Donovan (Senior strategist to the president of Harvard University)
Résumé high points: Donovan was secretary of Housing and Urban Development and director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Obama and was the administration’s point man for Hurricane Sandy recovery efforts. In New York, he was commissioner of the Department of Housing Preservation and Development under Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s administration.
Pet issues: Donovan has already put climate change at the core of his bid for mayor, issuing a lengthy policy plan that seeks to double down on the city’s environmental policies. As the city’s biggest contributors of greenhouse-gas emissions, new construction and how buildings are operated would see a spate of environmentally friendly changes under that plan.
Kathryn Garcia (former New York City Sanitation commissioner)
Résumé high points: Garcia has worn many hats in the de Blasio administration aside from her day job of overseeing trash and snow clearing: She was tasked with leading the city’s efforts to abate lead-paint exposure in children, named the interim chair and CEO of the New York City Housing Authority for part of 2019, and also served as the city’s emergency “food czar” this year to combat food insecurity for New Yorkers during the pandemic.
Pet issues: She is credited with big reforms to the city’s sanitation system, such as overseeing an overhaul to the chaotic private-carting industry (though the rollout of that new system has been delayed by COVID-19) as well as the creation of a curbside electronics-waste-disposal program and an expansion of composting.
Positioning: She’s casting herself as the “crisis manager” that New York City needs during its pandemic recovery.
Ray McGuire (Vice-chair of Citigroup)
Résumé high points: McGuire is a total newcomer to city politics. In order to run, he’s leaving his position as one of the highest-ranking and longest-serving Black executives on Wall Street.
Pet issues: He has used his position to advocate on racial-justice issues within the corporate world and has called on executives to do more in combating systemic racism.
Positioning: He’s counting on being seen as a financial expert who can steer the city out of a fiscal crisis and not as a player in a banking system that has heightened economic inequality.
Loree Sutton (former New York City Veterans’ Services commissioner)
Résumé high points: The retired brigadier general served as the Army’s highest-ranking psychiatrist. She did a tour in Egypt and also served in Iraq during the first Gulf War. Back in New York, Sutton played a key role in growing the Mayor’s Office of Veterans’ Affairs into a full-blown city department under de Blasio.
Pet issues: She is an advocate for military veterans, with a particular focus on homelessness and boosting mental-health services.
Positioning: Sutton, who opposes defunding the police, is banking on attracting moderate Democrats and seeks to embrace business interests that have felt ignored as de Blasio has focused on underserved communities.
Zach Iscol (Founder and CEO of digital-media company Grid North Group)
Résumé high points: Iscol is a Marine Corps veteran turned entrepreneur. He co-founded and served as the former chairman of the Headstrong Project, a nonprofit providing mental-health services for veterans, and also started Task & Purpose, a military-focused digital-media company. He was also deputy director of the temporary hospital at the Javits Center last spring.
Pet issues: Supporting military veterans is his chief cause.
Positioning: He’s probably the most moderate of the candidates and, like Sutton, also seeks to attract middle-of-the road Democrats.
Carlos Menchaca (City Council member)
Résumé high points: He was the LGBTQ and HIV community liaison to former City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and was budget coordinator to former Brooklyn borough president Marty Markowitz.
Pet issues: Menchaca is known for his focus on immigrant communities. A chair of the council’s Committee on Immigration, he helped pass the city’s IDNYC program — which made an identification card available to city residents regardless of immigration status — and secured funding for legal representation for immigrants facing deportation and has worked to limit city cooperation with federal immigration-enforcement officials. He’s also known as a transit advocate and has been particularly vocal on improving the city’s bike infrastructure.
Positioning: He is a staunch progressive who would be the city’s first Latino and openly gay mayor.
Dianne Morales (Executive director and CEO of social-services nonprofit Phipps Neighborhoods)
Résumé high points: She was a founding board member of Jumpstart, a 25-year-old national nonprofit that prepares preschoolers for kindergarten.
Pet issues: Morales’s platform is ardently progressive, with ideals like “community control” of the New York City Housing Authority, defunding the NYPD, and enacting a guaranteed minimum income for all city residents.
Positioning: She seeks to become the city’s first Afro-Latina mayor and has cast herself as the community-centric candidate whose advocacy in social justice will elevate the voices of the city’s marginalized.
Andrew Yang (Entrepreneur; former presidential candidate in the 2020 Democratic primary)
Résumé high points: He’s got name recognition — see #YangGang — and fundraising potential that could easily put him in the top tier of candidates, even though he’s never run for city office. He performed well in a recent poll, receiving 20 percent of support as the top choice among 1,000 Democratic likely primary voters (despite the fact that he hadn’t yet filed his paperwork to run).
Pet issue: Universal basic income. Yang advocated for giving every American $1,000 per month — what he named the “freedom dividend” — when he ran for president.
Positioning: He told the Daily News his New Year’s resolution was to “help New York City get back on its feet” (and to cut down on late-night snacks).
Pet issues: More than pushing for one big idea, Stringer has advocated for an array of causes like affordable housing, gun control, women’s reproductive rights, LGBTQ rights, and campaign-finance reform. Lately it’s felt like his chief purpose in life is to dunk on de Blasio, calling out the mayor with lawsuits, reports, and press releases for botched programs and initiatives.
Positioning: Steady moderate progressivism. He’s attempting to appeal to Democrats seeking an experienced politician while also looking for votes from the party’s progressive wing.
Controversies: Stringer has taken some heat for his record of approving large real-estate projects like Hudson Yards and the expansion of NYU’s campus.
Eric Adams (Brooklyn Borough President)
Pet issues: While serving as the cheerleader-in-chief for Brooklyn, he has cultivated a reputation as a champion for immigrant communities and the needs of small businesses and has been unabashedly pro-development — adapting former Alaska governor Sarah Palin’s “Drill, baby, drill” line into his “Build, baby, build” mantra.
Positioning: As a former cop, he has nuanced views on police reform and can perhaps build a coalition of Black New Yorkers and more conservative white voters. His platform so far has zeroed in on public safety and revitalizing the economy.
Maya Wiley (Senior vice-president of social justice and professor of urban policy at the New School)
Résumé high points: She’s a former top counsel for Mayor Bill de Blasio and is a onetime civil-rights attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. She’s also the former chair of the Civilian Complaint Review Board, the body that weighs claims of misconduct against NYPD officers. She gained a national reputation as a political and legal analyst for MSNBC.
Pet issues: Combating systemic racism and police brutality are her bread and butter.
Positioning: Wiley announced her exploration of a bid for mayor three months after the killing of George Floyd in May and has positioned herself, a Black woman, as an avatar for addressing the city’s racial and economic inequities.
Allies: Wiley has received what is probably the only coveted Trump bump in the mayoral race: Mary Trump, who wrote a tell-all about her uncle, hosted an online fundraiser for Wiley earlier this month.
Shaun Donovan (Senior strategist to the president of Harvard University)
Résumé high points: Donovan was secretary of Housing and Urban Development and director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Obama and was the administration’s point man for Hurricane Sandy recovery efforts. In New York, he was commissioner of the Department of Housing Preservation and Development under Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s administration.
Pet issues: Donovan has already put climate change at the core of his bid for mayor, issuing a lengthy policy plan that seeks to double down on the city’s environmental policies. As the city’s biggest contributors of greenhouse-gas emissions, new construction and how buildings are operated would see a spate of environmentally friendly changes under that plan.
Kathryn Garcia (former New York City Sanitation commissioner)
Résumé high points: Garcia has worn many hats in the de Blasio administration aside from her day job of overseeing trash and snow clearing: She was tasked with leading the city’s efforts to abate lead-paint exposure in children, named the interim chair and CEO of the New York City Housing Authority for part of 2019, and also served as the city’s emergency “food czar” this year to combat food insecurity for New Yorkers during the pandemic.
Pet issues: She is credited with big reforms to the city’s sanitation system, such as overseeing an overhaul to the chaotic private-carting industry (though the rollout of that new system has been delayed by COVID-19) as well as the creation of a curbside electronics-waste-disposal program and an expansion of composting.
Positioning: She’s casting herself as the “crisis manager” that New York City needs during its pandemic recovery.
Ray McGuire (Vice-chair of Citigroup)
Résumé high points: McGuire is a total newcomer to city politics. In order to run, he’s leaving his position as one of the highest-ranking and longest-serving Black executives on Wall Street.
Pet issues: He has used his position to advocate on racial-justice issues within the corporate world and has called on executives to do more in combating systemic racism.
Positioning: He’s counting on being seen as a financial expert who can steer the city out of a fiscal crisis and not as a player in a banking system that has heightened economic inequality.
Loree Sutton (former New York City Veterans’ Services commissioner)
Résumé high points: The retired brigadier general served as the Army’s highest-ranking psychiatrist. She did a tour in Egypt and also served in Iraq during the first Gulf War. Back in New York, Sutton played a key role in growing the Mayor’s Office of Veterans’ Affairs into a full-blown city department under de Blasio.
Pet issues: She is an advocate for military veterans, with a particular focus on homelessness and boosting mental-health services.
Positioning: Sutton, who opposes defunding the police, is banking on attracting moderate Democrats and seeks to embrace business interests that have felt ignored as de Blasio has focused on underserved communities.
Zach Iscol (Founder and CEO of digital-media company Grid North Group)
Résumé high points: Iscol is a Marine Corps veteran turned entrepreneur. He co-founded and served as the former chairman of the Headstrong Project, a nonprofit providing mental-health services for veterans, and also started Task & Purpose, a military-focused digital-media company. He was also deputy director of the temporary hospital at the Javits Center last spring.
Pet issues: Supporting military veterans is his chief cause.
Positioning: He’s probably the most moderate of the candidates and, like Sutton, also seeks to attract middle-of-the road Democrats.
Carlos Menchaca (City Council member)
Résumé high points: He was the LGBTQ and HIV community liaison to former City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and was budget coordinator to former Brooklyn borough president Marty Markowitz.
Pet issues: Menchaca is known for his focus on immigrant communities. A chair of the council’s Committee on Immigration, he helped pass the city’s IDNYC program — which made an identification card available to city residents regardless of immigration status — and secured funding for legal representation for immigrants facing deportation and has worked to limit city cooperation with federal immigration-enforcement officials. He’s also known as a transit advocate and has been particularly vocal on improving the city’s bike infrastructure.
Positioning: He is a staunch progressive who would be the city’s first Latino and openly gay mayor.
Dianne Morales (Executive director and CEO of social-services nonprofit Phipps Neighborhoods)
Résumé high points: She was a founding board member of Jumpstart, a 25-year-old national nonprofit that prepares preschoolers for kindergarten.
Pet issues: Morales’s platform is ardently progressive, with ideals like “community control” of the New York City Housing Authority, defunding the NYPD, and enacting a guaranteed minimum income for all city residents.
Positioning: She seeks to become the city’s first Afro-Latina mayor and has cast herself as the community-centric candidate whose advocacy in social justice will elevate the voices of the city’s marginalized.
Andrew Yang (Entrepreneur; former presidential candidate in the 2020 Democratic primary)
Résumé high points: He’s got name recognition — see #YangGang — and fundraising potential that could easily put him in the top tier of candidates, even though he’s never run for city office. He performed well in a recent poll, receiving 20 percent of support as the top choice among 1,000 Democratic likely primary voters (despite the fact that he hadn’t yet filed his paperwork to run).
Pet issue: Universal basic income. Yang advocated for giving every American $1,000 per month — what he named the “freedom dividend” — when he ran for president.
Positioning: He told the Daily News his New Year’s resolution was to “help New York City get back on its feet” (and to cut down on late-night snacks).
Budi
(15,325 posts)4. A well thought out plan for NYC's future
"He also says he wants to attract so-called TikTok hype houses, where social-media influencers live together in big mansions and shoot videos together".
😬
Crowman2009
(3,524 posts)9. What a joke!
Reminds me of the time when people were trying to avoid work by making YouTube video by stealing copyright material and boost their subscribers via sock accounts.
bucolic_frolic
(55,141 posts)5. Nothing is free, and government shouldn't be Santa Claus.
Wang needs to get something for these free checks. Community service, volunteerism, Neighborhood Watch. But not free to those who get it, but not for everyone. It's a popularity ploy.
oldsoftie
(13,538 posts)8. Totally correct.
But I guess i'd take him over who they have NOW
Crowman2009
(3,524 posts)6. Not impressed with his UBI plan last year.
Sure as hell won't be enough now! $2,000 per year isn't enough to cover expenses in NYC. And spare me this BS about how social media will create jobs.
oldsoftie
(13,538 posts)7. "Anybody but DeBlahsio".
Lord help NYC
George II
(67,782 posts)10. Kathryn Garcia and Dianne Morales are both graduates of my high school.
Lucky Luciano
(11,863 posts)11. Better than what my HS churned out:
Rebekah Mercer and Dan Scavino.
At least we also had AOC! 
George II
(67,782 posts)12. A few other graduates from my HS are Eric Holder, Jerry Nadler, and David Axelrod - we're all....
....about six years apart (I'm the oldest).
Nadler was in my home room class, although I remember very little about him.