NYC mayoral candidate Kathryn Garcia on her growing momentum, getting the city back on its feet, and why she thinks Andrew Yang’s popularity is purely name-recognition.
Vanity Fair
I would say he might’ve seen some polling. I would say that might [have been] driven by [that] because he’s been making my case for mayor through his entire campaign. I was like, “Thank you for saying that I should actually run the government.” You could just [make me mayor]. That’s what I’m running for.Oh, I’m not picking my administration until June 22. You’ve got to knock on wood. Don’t jinx yourself.
I’ve done indoor dining. Being double vaxxed and having the CDC say you’re safe is incredibly liberating. But even before that, when my mother and father got double vaxxed, being able to see them was amazing.We have to be an exciting, livable city. We have to have art and culture and restaurants lead because we are in competition [with other cities].
I think the line is “the rent is too damn high.” And part of that is just the scarcity of product. We need to build more. Five hundred thousand people came to New York City, and we built 100,000 units of housing. We just don’t keep up. And we haven’t since about 1946. And that means making it easier for people to get their permits and get through the approval process. We need to build 50,000 units of deeply affordable housing, as well as investing in NYCHA.
It’s a false choice to say that you can only have one or the other. Everyone deserves to be safe in their neighborhoods, regardless of the color of [their] skin. We have to be attacking the gun violence that we’ve seen [and] making sure we’re working with the You’ve said that you don’t want your commissioner to be “a cop’s cop,” as has been the case in the past.