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New York’s power brokers didn’t know what to expect when Andrew Yang met with Zoom to audition for the city’s most important work last morning. An hour later, many were quietly surprised.
To begin with, the mayoral candidate led the crowd from an empty Midtown office building – urgent need staff to return to the city. He struck a pragmatic tone on the divisive issue of raising taxes. And the company leader threw them out as partners and allies in an effort to heal the wounded city – not enemies or obstacles.
“We can’t turn it into a moment when it was concluded that Covid’s business shouldn’t have been here,” Yang said, saying the city is “embarrassing” job losses Florida.
“The biggest city in the world is open for business!” he proclaimed, overwhelmed with excitement.
This performance and others like it have begun to dispel the opinion of the city’s business leaders about Yang, as many considered the outside candidate carefully for his limited experience and sometimes difficult-to-determine political orientation.
After Yang was removed from office, directors are increasingly considering the possibility of becoming the city’s next mayor, as several polls show that they open up a big advantage ahead of the crucial first democratic phases on June 22nd.
In a recent poll by the think tank Data for Progress, Yang won 26% of the first vote, compared to 13% of his closest opponent, Eric Adams, president of the Brooklyn neighborhood. Surprisingly, Yang, an Asian American, led the field among black voters. Another survey by NY1 and Ipsos yielded a similar result: Yang was 22 percent, Adams was 13 percent and city driver Scott Stringer was 11 percent.
Yang, meanwhile, is stepping up the courtship of the business community by holding one-on-one meetings with senior executives, people who knew the subject said.
“Andrew Yang is starting to see it in a much more beneficial light because it doesn’t demoralize the business class and really recognizes the city’s centrality over and over again,” said Mary Ann Tighe, the region’s three commercial directors. CBRE real estate broker, admitted that he initially did not take Yang’s candidacy seriously or believed that he had the credentials to run the city.
“What always amazes me is not knowing that the trade was in New York City purpose Since the West Indian company landed in 1624, “added Tighe, past chairman of a powerful real estate committee of New York developers,” and I think one of the things people love about Yang is embracing that. ”
Travis Terry, president of Capalino, one of the city’s most influential lobby companies, has noticed a similar change.
“It’s a sense based on a lot of conversations with business leaders, yes, they’re warming up,” Terry said. “It may have been scary at first for Andrew’s lack of experience, but it’s more obvious that he sees the business community as an important partner.”
Some stay fresh. An executive who asked him not to identify himself described Yang as a candidate for Trump, a celebrity without a key government. “It talks about good gaming, but it’s not a proven commodity,” this person said contemptuously.
Business leaders have felt a growing fear of this pandemic shadow election. Many believe that current mayor Bill de Blasio, a progressive who came to power in the two-city story, is one of the worst in New York history.
With Covid-19, the city’s challenges – significant in the best of times – have metastasized: multi-million dollar deficits are projected for the coming years; racial divisions have deepened; schools, basic services and public safety have been damaged; and there is now an existential threat to the city’s economic engine if workers decide not to return to office buildings like Yang spoke.
In short, many executives worry that the city is at a crossroads and can’t afford another Blasio, supporters of the Boston Red Sox, who see him as an ideologue with weak leadership skills. The recent moves by a left-wing state legislature to raise taxes on business and the wealthy have only deepened the feeling of being besieged.
“It simply came to our notice then. The city could go one way or the other, ”explained a consultant to a top developer.
Given the stakes, many executives tend to have the best chance of winning the moderates to abandon their dream dreams.
That seems to carry weight Ray McGuire, A former head of investment banking at Citigroup, is often considered by business leaders to be the most successful managers and theirs.
“We need a mayor who knows how the business works, not the first management job to run a big city,” McGuire said recently in an apparent shot at Yang.
McGuire, who grew up black and fatherless, has become an eloquent spokesman for the corporate vision of a more inclusive city. However, the neophyte politician did not create much momentum in his first campaign.
Adams, a former black police officer who has pledged to restore security on city streets while healing racial divisions, is receiving good reviews – if not inspired – after a long career in city politics. Some analysts still see it as a winner.
Meanwhile, Stringer is respected because he is aware of the complexity of city government. But he moved away from a large part of the business community in recent years by moving towards a progressive group against the corporation. Last year the developers played a huge role when Stinger announced that he would not take their contributions. The business is also called by lawyer Maya Wiley and a civil rights activist who was Blasio’s chief lawyer.
A politically connected New York executive has predicted that a Yang in front of him will face a massive fire in the coming weeks. If he can hold on, then even those who are careful can decide to back off.
“Ultimately, the business community is practical,” the executive said. “No one wants to be the last person on the train.”
For the first time, New York City will use the ballot chosen. If a candidate does not win a majority after the first round, then the minimum candidate is rejected and their votes are redistributed. This means that it can be useful for Yang, or for others, to shake voters, even if the candidate is ultimately not their best option.
Yang, 46, was born in Schenectady, a city near Albany, the capital of New York State, and grew up in Westchester County before attending Manhattan to attend Columbia Law School. He worked at Davis Polk & Wardwell. Eventually, he became the CEO of a Manhattan Prep test preparation company that was sold to the education company Kaplan.
He appeared as a weird star looking for a democratic presidential candidate for defending universal basic income for citizens. Most of the candidates wore an American flag pin on their chests, while Yang wore a button: Math.
Chris Coffey, Yang’s campaign director for mayor, said the candidate didn’t fit in at all: he was a progressive who defended the UBI, a pragmatic foreign executive who was tainted by city politics, and a regular pragmatic executive who believed in business – big and small – were key to reclaiming the city.
While Yang still supports the reduced version of UBI, he now talks a lot about the not-so-high issues of garbage collection and other basic administrations that are dear to New Yorkers. When JetBlue recently mentioned the possibility of moving the jobs to Florida, Yang did not release a press release, but sought a meeting with the company’s CEO to hear his concerns.
“I really don’t think that’s the only problem,” Coffey said of the growing interest in directors for Yang. “I think, ‘Is there anyone who can hear me?'”
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