Kathryn Garcia has spent the bulk of her career cleaning up men’s messes—and now, she’s running to be the first woman mayor of NYC. 'Men do really believe that they should have the top job and that women should help make it happen,' KGforNYC says.
It’s 9:45 A.M. on a Saturday, 18 days before the New York City mayoral election primary, and Democratic candidate Kathryn Garcia is riding in a green and blue sprinter van, her face—at least two feet tall—plastered on the outside.
She knows these streets. Garcia, 51, was raised less than 15 minutes from where we are now, the daughter of a teacher and a labor negotiator, in a multiracial family. She now lives just two blocks from her mother’s home, a reason that, if she wins the election, she won’t move to Manhattan’s Gracie Mansion.
When Garcia decided to run, she understood the challenge ahead of her—she’s nothing if not practical. Not only would she have to win over notoriously tough New Yorkers, but she’d have to do it while navigating the sexist landscape that plagues female political candidates. “I know that it is harder for a woman,” she says. “You're going to have to work harder on the campaign. It's going to be tougher to raise money than it is for men.
And though a strength, her ability to “get it done” is often weaponized, too. One of the biggest critiques of her candidacy is that she’s not a visionary, but a doer. She doesn't see why she can’t be both. Garcia says she does, in fact, have a big-picture design for the city. “I want [New Yorkers] to have what my parents had,” she says. “I want them to have a livable, safe city.” She challenges the notion that her competitors actually have original ideas.
But that doesn’t mean she’s evaded all scrutiny. In February, Philip Seelig, an attorney for the Sanitation Department enforcement agents,and says he plans to file a class-action lawsuit. The complaint alleges that sanitation agents, who are mostly women and nonwhite, received less pay and lower pension benefits than men doing similar jobs in another division known as sanitation police.
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