Week in Review 4/2/21

Bloomberg [3/29]

Andrew Yang Wants Alma Mater Columbia to Pay for City Services

Andrew Yang, the former presidential contender running for New York City mayor, says his alma mater Columbia University is going to have to pitch in to help with the city’s budget. How much money he says he can get may be a stretch.

Yang, a 46-year-old Democrat, wants wealthy universities in the city to pay for services like fire protection and garbage removal. And he wants to scrap a tax subsidy given to Madison Square Garden. Combined, his proposals could raise “in the low hundreds of millions,” he said.

Vanity Fair [3/29]

“The Moment is Hope and Optimism”: Can Andrew Yang Deliver on His “Sugar-Rush” Mayoral Campaign?

If he wins, it will be largely because of Yang’s sense of timing and the clarity of his pitch, which are no small things in politics. “What little messaging I have seen from the other campaigns, I have been struck by how much of it seems to be kind of negative,” Yang says. “The other candidates are going to be staking their campaigns on whether they can have us and a lot of New Yorkers being kind of pessimistic or mistrustful. If our campaign still feels positive and energetic and buoyant in the final days, and as long as we’re still focused on the problems that New Yorkers see around them every day, I think we’re going to do great.”

Daily News [3/29]

Yang demands de Blasio sock away 70 percent of fed stimulus for NYC

Yang wants de Blasio to set aside 70% of federal stimulus money for city budgets after he leaves office at the end of this year and suggested Hizzoner’s legacy would be tarnished if he doesn’t act in the city’s long-term financial interest.

He cited projections that the city could face shortfalls of up to $5 billion a year “for the next number of years” as support for an austere approach to how the stimulus is spent. He also hit de Blasio for adding approximately 30,000 new jobs to the city’s municipal workforce since coming to City Hall in 2014.

Additional coverage in AMNY.

The Hill [3/29]

Zaid Jilani says Andrew Yang running a 'parochial-like, common sense-type' campaign in New York

Jilani said Yang’s strategy works to appeal to individuals who are not “plugged-in political insiders,” which is similar to what he did in his 2020 White House bid.

“I think Yang's approach to politics — which is just like appealing to people who aren't necessarily plugged-in political insiders, who don't speak like activists, who don't necessarily follow every little development in the news. But it's sort of appealing to people on sort of a person-to-person, human-to-human basis, which is a lot of what he did in his presidential campaign,” he said

Fortune [3/29]

Andrew Yang has a tough fight ahead of him, but he says he’s the man to revitalize New York

What are some of your big picture ideas for the economy? Would you bring universal basic income to New York? 

We need to do everything we can to help keep people in secure and stable situations, so I'm for targeted cash relief. I'm for getting more New Yorkers high speed internet. I'm for getting more people access to basic financial services. Almost one in eight New Yorkers does not have a bank account, which is unconscionable in the world financial capital.

NY Post [3/30]

Andrew Yang says Midtown beating victim ‘could have easily been my mother’

New York City mayoral frontrunner Andrew Yang on Tuesday said the woman who was beaten in a hateful attack in Midtown “could have easily been my mother.”

“Like so many other people, I woke up to a horrifying video of an Asian woman being horribly beaten for no other reason than her race,” the former presidential hopeful told reporters outside of the St. Ann & the Holy Trinity Church in Brooklyn.

Additional coverage in the NYT, NY1, and Daily News.

NY Post [3/30]

Andrew Yang embraces plan to build NYC’s first green energy hub in Queens

Andrew Yang is backing a plan to convert the dormant Long Island City waterfront into the city’s first green energy hub if elected, the mayoral candidate told The Post.

Yang is now endorsing an ambitious $250 million proposal to build a green energy plant that would generate power for local residents and businesses — including NYCHA’s Queensbridge Houses, the largest public housing complex in the country.

Yang emphasized the River Green Power project — to be built on private poverty on Vernon Boulevard between 43rd and 44th Avenue — will create good jobs to help spur a Big Apple economic revival from the pandemic-fueled recession as well as generate clean energy for the area.

NY Mag [3/31]

What Andrew Yang Can’t Live Without

I think it was relatively early in my presidential campaign when someone was like, “Hey, you might want to get some shirts that are fitted.” They recommended shirts from J.Hilburn because they are relatively affordable and high quality. I ordered a bunch of these blue ones, and they just kind of became a uniform. As someone who has been running for office for much of the past several years, having a lot of identical shirts is very handy. I get recognized when I go outside wearing these. Putting on one of the shirts, I sort of feel like Batman.

Daily News [4/1]

Andrew Yang touts himself as independent of special interests, rivals pounce

“I called for schools to reopen because it was the right thing to do. That was clear to me as a public school parent and a parent of a special needs son,” he said. “I called for city control of the subway because it was the right thing to do. This was clear to me as a subway rider and New Yorker. How can we champion and manage our city’s recovery if we don’t control the way New Yorkers get to work and school every day?”

Huffington Post [4/2]

How Much Credit Does Andrew Yang Get For All These Stimulus Checks?

“I give him a lot of credit for popularizing the idea, but it’s so old,” Lowrey, a staff writer at The Atlantic, said of Yang in an interview. “Nobody except for him really is talking about UBI, but it’s giving people a new language to discuss what would have been called welfare.”