MEET (SOME OF) THE CANDIDATES

Bill de Blasio (D, Incumbent)

Top 3 Issues: Education, City Affordability, Police-Community Relations

Education: (Free) universal Pre-K, “turn around” struggling schools (“increase instructional time in schools, added academic intervention teams to overhaul curriculum and course offerings, and deployed groups of experienced principals to strengthen leadership”), fully air-conditioned classrooms by 2022, improve school safety (“reduc[e] unnecessary court involvement, and add[] effective interventions that stay within the schools”), make algebra accessible to all eighth grade students, add computer science to public school curricula, and free school lunches

City Affordability: Require developers to pay for and build affordable homes in many new developments, provide free legal assistance for tenants under threat of eviction, and helped to fix conditions in NYCHA buildings (including a $1 billion investment to replace roofs and investing millions for additional lights, cameras, and security, as well as new broadband and Wi-Fi)

Police-Community Relations: Permanently assigned Neighborhood Coordination Officers to get to know local communities and partner with residents and local store owners, retraining every officer in de-escalation and adding implicit bias training, and give every officer a smartphone and equip vehicles with tablets

Nicole Malliotakis (R)

Top 3 Issues: Transportation & Traffic, Jobs & Affordability, Quality of Life

Transportation & Traffic: Install Smart Light Technology (which “combines traditional traffic lights with high tech sensors and artificial intelligence to create a traffic control system that measures traffic flow and instantaneously adjusts the timing of the traffic lights to manage changing traffic patterns, ease congestion and reduce accidents and emissions”)and eliminate speed, red light, and bus lane cameras (“the expansion of Smart Light technology to facilitate traffic will allow ticket generating traffic cameras to be phased out”)

Jobs & Affordability​: Streamline permit process for new businesses, adjust the commercial rent tax to exempt smaller businesses, reform the way fines and penalties are issued so businesses can correct minor violations, and invest in more vocational training opportunities for those who choose not to attend college

Quality of Life: Opposes de Blasio’s plan to close Rikers Island and build jails across the five boroughs, modernize and reform the existing prison complex to increase safety for both inmates and officers, and rectify the case backlog in the justice system that has led to delays

Aaron Commey (L)

Top 3 Issues: Criminal Justice Reform, Education, Poverty

Criminal Justice Reform: Address our motivation behind and approach to making and passing new legislation, not expand the war on drugs, not expand prostitution laws, and not enact new “sin taxes,” limiting police officers’ negative interactions with the public, end intrusive policies like stop and frisk and place, ensure that Government officials at all levels of the criminal justice system adhere to statutory and constitutional law, and review and strengthen modes of accountability for prosecutors and judges

Education: Allow parents to have greater freedom over their children’s education (by providing them with greater, more diverse and higher quality choices in education), provide a better, more fruitful education in basic education (instead of free college), and teach basic principles of economics, business and entrepreneurship in NYC school classrooms


Poverty: Have the city government to stop contributing to economic burden through taxation and support unions (who are “a critical component in securing better wages, benefits, and working conditions for workers and will vigorously fight any legislation designed to prohibit the unionization of workers and prohibiting union security agreements between unions and employers”