Who Wants to Be New York City Mayor? So Far, Only Men

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/03/nyregion/newyorktoday/nyc-news-women-mayor-election.html

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It’s Wednesday.

Weather: Zip up the windbreaker. Winds gusting over 40 miles per hour are expected to sweep through the city, starting in the late morning and lasting until early evening. Temperatures will be in the 40s in the morning and reach a high in the mid-60s.

Alternate-side parking: In effect until April 18 (Holy Thursday).

When The New York Post’s Page Six column reported that Jeff Zucker, CNN’s president, was possibly interested in running for New York mayor, some people were skeptical.

After all, the gossip column called the news “a wild rumor flying around the TV industry” and published it on April Fools’ Day.

Others, like Monica Klein, a political consultant who once worked for Mayor de Blasio, saw it as another reminder that the city has never elected a woman to its top office. In contrast, yesterday Chicago elected Lori Lightfoot as mayor, becoming the largest American city to ever choose a black woman as its top official.

In New York, Mr. Zucker joined a list of men who have been named as potential 2021 mayoral candidates: City Comptroller Scott Stringer, City Council Speaker Corey Johnson, Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. and Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams.

(Letitia James, the former city public advocate, was thought to be a promising candidate before she became the state attorney general.)

The question in New York “isn’t so much who could run and win as a woman, but what does the fact that we only have an all-male field tell us about the lack of developing female leadership in this city?” Ms. Klein said.

“Why don’t we have a bench?” she added. “It’s 2019.”

As we’ve noted before, the number of women on the City Council has shrunk. In 2009, women held 18 of the 51 seats. This year, they hold 11.

And in the state’s five largest cities — New York, Buffalo, Rochester, Yonkers and Syracuse — there is only one female mayor: Lovely Warren of Rochester.

In 2013, Mr. de Blasio was elected to the first of his two terms by defeating candidates including Christine Quinn, the first woman to be City Council speaker. So far, it’s unclear whether Ms. Quinn or Melissa Mark-Viverito — who followed Ms. Quinn as council speaker and recently lost the race for public advocate — will toss their names into the hat for the mayoral contest.

Ms. Klein, who after working for Mr. de Blasio co-founded a consulting firm aimed at electing progressive women to office, pointed to a couple of reasons more women haven’t run for mayor.

• The pipeline: Many elected officials get their start working for lawmakers, Ms. Klein said. Women miss out on that experience if they are not hired for those jobs.

• The signals: In big and small ways, society encourages men to speak up and women to be quiet, she said. Those messages can steer women out of the running long before any race begins.

Ms. Klein’s advice: “Run for office. Don’t wait five years, don’t wait 10 years, because men are not waiting.”

What’s behind the spike in murders in Brooklyn? Gang violence, the police said.

Nightmare at 39 Pearl Street: A clerical error quadrupled taxes at a building in Dumbo, Brooklyn.

Slave owners’ names are on dorms at a SUNY school. That’s changing.

As the New York Legislature finished approving the state budget, some progressive lawmakers were furious.

Spared from the shredder (for now): “priceless” bank records of 19th-century New York.

[Want more news from New York and around the region? Check out our full coverage.]

The mini crossword: Here is today’s puzzle.

2020 presidential run? Mayor de Blasio will visit Boston and Las Vegas at the end of the week. [NY1]

One police officer was struck by a car and another was struck by a drone during a funeral for a rabbi in Brooklyn. [Pix 11]

Nearly 200 personal vehicles driven by police officers in the Bronx and Manhattan were issued tickets for speeding or running a red light. [Streetsblog]

Only 41 percent of New York City voters support congestion pricing, according to a new poll. [Daily News]

After 22 years, Carrie Mason-Draffen, a newspaper columnist, is retiring. [Newsday]

The tap artist Ayodele Casel and special guests perform at Brownsville Recreation Center in Brooklyn. 11:30 a.m. [Free with R.S.V.P.]

Learn about throat singing from a Tibetan Buddhist monk at the City University of New York’s Lehman College in the Bronx. 12:30 p.m. [Free]

A jazz jam session is dedicated to Louis Armstrong at Flushing Town Hall in Queens. 7 p.m. [$10]

Disease outbreaks and biosurveillance are the focus of a discussion by experts at the Museum of the City of New York in Manhattan. 6:30 p.m. [$15]

— Elisha Brown

Events are subject to change, so double-check before heading out. For more events, see the going-out guides from The Times’s culture pages.

New York City’s restaurant bible is back in print.

This fall, the Zagat New York City restaurant guide will be printed for the first time since 2016.

For those unfamiliar with Zagat, here’s its back story, courtesy of my colleague Florence Fabricant, who writes the weekly Front Burner and Off the Menu columns. Forty years ago — long before Yelp — two lawyers named Tim and Nina Zagat, along with some friends, started rating restaurants. The rest is history.

Google acquired Zagat in 2011 for $151 million. The Infatuation, a restaurant rating and guides platform, bought it from Google last year for an undisclosed amount.

The Infatuation’s chief executive, Chris Stang, told Ms. Fabricant, “From the moment we took control of the brand, we were interested in bringing Zagat back to print.”

To publish the new Zagat survey, the Infatuation says it needs help from the public. Online voting for restaurants in the new guide will be open through May 5.

It’s Wednesday — eat your heart out.

Dear Diary:

When my friend Sandy’s cousin died five years ago, Sandy kept some of her things.

One day, I noticed that Sandy was wearing a pair of black leather gloves with pink stripes. I told her I liked them.

She said they had belonged to her cousin, and then she gave them to me. I wore them for a few winters and then donated them to a local thrift shop.

Recently, I met Sandy to go to a movie. She had on the same black gloves with pink stripes.

I asked her where she had gotten them.

“The Vintage Thrift shop,” she said.

She had forgotten they once belonged to her.

— Doris Weil

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