Andrew Yang: a man best known for his successful failure of a 2020 presidential run in which he gained a cult following and massive social media presence for his proposal of giving every American over the age of 18 $1000 every month. Now, Yang is the early favorite to win the 2021 NYC Mayoral elections. The other candidates have sensed this, in recent days, and have done a good job of jointly going on the attack to “dethrone” him. The New York “locals” are “double-covering” the “outsider.” Through a combination of intelligence, humor, charisma, blatant-but-controlled political-incorrectness, and realistic utopian ideas, Yang seized the hearts, support, and donation dollars of many. Here’s why the New York-born Taiwanese-American entrepreneur-turned-politician will build upon his name recognition on a smooth ride to the top office in City Hall.
I got the opportunity to talk to Andrew Yang, and I asked why he would be the Mayor that New York City needs. He pointed to the great rebuilding task that lies ahead for the city, saying, “The central question is how quickly can we recover, and what does that recovery curve look like? I’m running for mayor because I think I can help it happen faster. New York needs a solutions-oriented pragmatic problem solver to get back on its feet, [and] as an operator, I tend to look at numbers.” Yang is known as a numbers guy – his presidential campaign slogan, “MATH,” was an acronym for “Make America Think Harder.” He would also often joke on the campaign trail that, “The opposite of Donald Trump is an Asian man who likes math.” In order to recover economically from the COVID-19 pandemic, New York City must elect, as Yang described, a solutions-oriented problem solver. The Mayor of NYC needs to wake up with real solutions to real problems each day, and Yang is ready to do just that.
With polling leads in first, second, and third-place votes, the race appears to be the number-loving Yang’s to lose. He has safely surpassed every donation checkpoint and was the fourth candidate to hit the 11,000 individual donor mark, doing so nearly a month ago, followed by an additional $2 million in funds from the city to pair with the more than $1 million in donations he had already received. With senior advisor Anthony Mercurio, a former Pete Buttigieg advisor, onboard, Yang is pulling in money at incredible rates. Although his 4th place finish in the race to 11,000 donors may seem lackluster, it’s important to note that he entered the Mayoral race long after most of his opposition. With the new ranked-choice voting system set to be implemented for the Mayoral elections later this year, Yang seems confident in his vote-getting ability. In a memo sent out by co-campaign managers Sasha Ahuja and Chris Coffey, the campaign highlighted the importance of appealing to every “lane” of support in order to be a top 3 choice for voters. “Because we don’t fall into one traditional ‘lane,’ we expect to take some voters from every lane as first, second, or third choice,” the managers remarked. When I spoke to Yang, he accredited his favorable polling numbers to, “High name I.D. and favorability.”
While on the presidential campaign trail, many saw Yang as a candidate campaigning on the novel idea of Universal Basic Income, not as a well-rounded and electable candidate. If elected Mayor, Yang would have no opportunity to create a VAT tax that could generate anywhere near the amount of money required for Universal Basic Income. It is clear that Yang has to alter his presidential platforms for the Mayoral campaign, but perhaps less than one might think. I asked Yang how he planned to step away from the one-dimensional public perception of him being a candidate running solely on Universal Basic Income, and how he planned to become a more well-rounded candidate in the voters’ eyes, to which he responded, “One of the things I am running on is trying to curb poverty in New York City, and there are [a few] ways we can do that.” Yang went on to say that he plans to address poverty through cash relief to those who need it, in addition to pointing out that poverty exists in many forms, including the fact that nearly 30% of New Yorkers don’t have high-speed internet at home, and pledging to work to reduce that number.
Yang also spoke about the dangers of transportation deserts, saying, “If you have to commute 90 or 100 minutes one way to get to your job, that’s poverty.” With the scaled-down budget of New York City, Yang acknowledged that “We’re going to have to be a little clever.” He added, “One of the things I want to do to help our economy recover… is to create borough bucks programs where people have local currency that can only be spent at locally owned small businesses. There’s a way for us to get resources into people’s hands that will circulate many times.” Yang noted that this policy idea was inspired by a system that currently exists among Yeshiva schools in Brooklyn that gives families vouchers to spend at local small businesses, and said, “If New Yorkers are already doing this, why can’t we rev this up to try to channel more resources to small businesses in a time of need?” Although Yang cannot give every New Yorker $1000 monthly, he can give a basic income to those who need it most – more specifically, a group of 500,000 New Yorkers with the greatest economic need. Yang plans to start by giving each person in the program up to $2000 annually, but he expects that increased funding will lead to the expansion of the Basic Income program.
Yang also pointed out the tremendous problem that 12% of New Yorkers have: a lack of bank accounts that leads to tremendous exploitation at check cashers and difficulty among other problems. Yang’s solution? The establishment of the People’s Bank of New York City, a bank intended for underserved communities that will be tasked with distributing Basic Income stimulus directly into bank accounts, giving low-interest loans to entrepreneurs who are “being overlooked by traditional banks,” and giving people another place to cash no-fee checks.
Along with his primary goal of ending extreme poverty in NYC, Yang expects that providing a basic income, and “getting the economic boot off of people’s throats” will increase mental and physical health and decrease crime. Yang’s website reads: “By reducing crime, hospital visits and homelessness, this basic income program will decrease the costs associated with these social ills and allow the cash relief program to grow over time.” With concrete plans to put money in the pockets of the people who need it most, Andrew Yang has all but locked up the vote of the impoverished population. At this point in time, Andrew Yang’s odds to win the race seem very favorable, but he has gotten some bad press as of late. His voting records were uncovered, and it was found that he had never voted in a New York Mayoral election. When asked about this, he accredited his failure to fulfill his civic duty to a lack of candidates that excited him. And, this is where Yang sets himself apart. He’s young, energetic, personable, and full of concrete plans and data. Yang is the exciting candidate that he’s missed when failing to vote in previous elections. As long as the Yang campaign can keep the lights on with donation dollars, the charismatic Andrew Yang is in great position to seize control of City Hall, and become the next Mayor of New York City.
