Andrew Yang? You Can’t Be Serious

And so it is that at a time when New York City is in an economic and social crisis unlike any in our lifetime, THE New York Times and Crain’s Business celebrate Andrew Yang, a man with absolutely no qualifications or experience to serve as Mayor of any place much less New York, as the leading candidate in the primary race for the nomination and automatic winner of this year’s Mayoral election.

Luckily at the moment, two things are true about this. The first is that New York is trying something new…a ranking of candidates in the upcoming primary so that voters can indicate a first, second, third. fourth and fifth choice as if many voters will have learned enough about any of the candidates to literally make five choices in a meaningful way.

The second thing is that polls have become meaningless because campaigning in a COVID atmosphere is not really campaigning at all.

Anything can happen on Zoom except the reality of live performances; those on a stage by themselves or in a group expounding ideas, personalities, energies. And then taking the time to answer questions so that those in the audience can tell whether they know what they are talking about.

So then why bother writing about a Yang or a Ray McGuire…decent men with absolutely nothing to offer, no experience or knowledge …handling a job considered the toughest of its kind in the nation?

Because major stories by major news organs carry a weight of their own…one worthy of a counterweight.

This then is that counterweight

MEETING YANG

Several years ago the Liberal Party went looking for a candidate for Governor.

Andrew Cuomo had no real opposition from the Republicans…not then…not since and so there was no thought of a fusion relationship with a Republican candidate as we had forged in certain years with Republicans running for Mayor of New York.

Our goal was to find a candidate strong enough to attract the 50,000 votes a political party needs in a New York Gubernatorial race to obtain permanent ballot status in the four years between elections for Governor.

(That centuries old law was recently changed by Cuomo to make the number of votes 130,000 in a Presidential election)

We saw that potential in former City Comptroller and Mayoral candidate John Liu of Queens. The Liberal Party had launched Mr. Liu’s political career by supporting him for a council seat years ago and had watched him grow to become a formidable candidate for Mayor. Sadly for him and the city, his campaign people had gotten involved in some essentially illegal fundraising practices and eventually several staff members were indicted. Those activities doomed his chance. But we knew the Asian community, growing larger and more influential by the year, could certainly help support and finance another campaign of his if he chose to run.

We met with Mr. Liu in Flushing and found him believing that his support was gone and that he was out of politics. We could not convince him otherwise but hoped he would reconsider his career at a later date because we believed his constituency would be supportive.

He would later change his mind and run and win a State Senate seat from his essentially Asian district in Queens where he is serving vigorously.

And then we heard of Andrew Yang who had made a YouTube impression with his idea that by giving everyone a $12,000 annual stipend they would have the money to help maintain or rise to a decent middle class living. It was an interesting idea marked mostly by his enthusiastic skill in presenting it.

We knew something of his background: the son of Taiwanese immigrants, he attended Columbia Law School in the bubble of the 1990’s. He started a charity that didn’t work. He then began working as an executive in several tech companies and did after hours work as a nightclub promoter. He then started an education company helping young people learn the tech business which attracted the education giant Kaplan which bought him out in 2009 making him in his words, a multimillion dollar entrepreneurial success.

And it was at that time that he decided that his big idea of providing ‘start up’ money to citizens was worthy of a political career. He needed a stage to sell his product…politics would be it.

We met him in a dark, bare office in a nondescript office building in the garment district of Manhattan.

We talked for more than an hour. Several things were clear. He knew nothing about government and little about politics but that didn’t seem to bother him. He was just trying to decide at what level he could enter the political scene.

Despite his lack of knowledge and experience he thought his big idea was worth running for President.

Being Governor of New York had no meaning for him at all.

At first it seemed that this was a young man who thought so much of his idea, who was so committed to it, that he thought he could sell it to the nation before he attempted to see if it would work.

He wanted the biggest stage he could find and the only one he thought acceptable was the Presidency.

The conversation became an endless presentation yet without much specificity.

It seemed that to him the idea was big and important and details about it were unnecessary.

Neither one of us had any real use for the other.

And then months later Andrew Yang had raised enough money to put himself on the stage during the Democratic Party’s Primary debates.

THE 2021 MAYOR’S RACE

Two things matter about Andrew Yang that cannot be ignored.

He has a salesman’s personality…affable, agreeable, enthusiastic, energetic and he likes to ride his bike.

He raised $40 million dollars running for President…an effort that had absolutely no chance at success but left him with millions he could call his own.

The Democratic Presidential primary lineup was replete with diversity: men and women of color, experience, ideas, supporters. Yang fit physically but only his enthusiasm came through. He was trying but was easily overwhelmed.

And so he came away with nice name recognition and money.

And he feels that is enough to qualify him to be Mayor of New York.

The media reports that all of his human qualities are on display but suggest that what ideas he has seem a little askew.

His belief that government should run as a corporation…citywide departments should act as if they were corporate divisions and employees and managers should act accordingly is seriously sophomoric.

His suggestion that people will eventually come back to work in all those empty office buildings because, he warns, if not technology will be used to replace them.

His sense of the new power of tech and its essential destructive force is right on. His warning and solution to a new work ethic is seriously lacking in judgement.

The public sees him as a fresh face and not as some tired politician…as if being “nice, fresh and different” is enough to run any New York, much less one in great distress on many, many levels.

It appears that Yang has no awareness of the essential corruption of the Democratic Party…a “Pay to Play” ethic which continues a long history stretching back centuries. Such an ethic has become the foundation of that party and not knowing what that means is like building a house on a rotten foundation. It will undermine everything you try to do no matter how worthy.

If Yang leads the polls on the basis of his friendly enthusiasm what of the man with the most experience who is dragging in the polls? What of the man the Liberal Party launched years ago into a State Assembly seat…a man who then became Borough President of Manhattan and then for the last eight years Comptroller of the city? What of Scott Stringer who has all the experience and a genuine knowledge of New York government?

Stringer may find his way to the nomination but his struggles now are based on his failure to be what he has had the knowledge to be…the man whose audits revealed much but who did not have the courage to back them up. The man who knows all about the power of control and chose not to take it on.

Primaries are primaries and not general elections. Only a small percentage of registered Democrats will bother to vote…and take the time to make all those ranking choices.

And so a result is impossible to predict.

But if the winner is Andrew Yang, New York will make a tragic mistake…for him and all of us.

Poor New York. Poor New York.