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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. Today, we'll continue our WNYC Centennial series, 100 Years of 100 Things, with Thing No. 6, 100 years of air conditioning. This follows Monday's segment on 100 years of rising temperatures in New York and around the world. One of the things we'll do is invite your oral histories, for those of you old enough, of living without air conditioning, and then living with air conditioning in your home, in your workplace, in your car, wherever that's coming up.

Also, Carol Leonnig from The Washington Post, who's been covering Secret Service failures for a decade, this isn't the first one, on how the July 13th shooting happened as far as we know, and to answer your questions generally about an agency we tend to take for granted, the one that protects the President and presidential candidates and selected others. We will officially introduce you today to our official new On the Media host as of today, Micah Loewinger. You know him if you listen to OTM.

Today, the station is announcing that he has officially been named co-host, so we're going to talk about some of Micah's amazing reporting leading up to today and what he plans to do with Brooke Gladstone and Brooke with him. They'll both be on, coming up in a little bit. We'll talk about your local Mr. Fruit. Some of you know what that is. We start with our lead Eric Adams reporter Elizabeth Kim, who comes on most Wednesdays after the mayor's Tuesday news conferences. Hi, Liz, and happy Wednesday.

Elizabeth Kim: Happy Wednesday, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Let's start with the mayor endorsing Kamala Harris for president and reminding us that he's done that before. Here we go.

Mayor Eric Adams: It was extremely fresh that the President decided not to run. I have a great deal of respect for President Biden, not only for his role as president but a person who has overcome just a series of tragedies and as someone who has experienced their own tragedies. There was a moment to let the President go through his moment of leaving the race. I reached out to the leaders in the city and I reached out to Jay Jacobs, who's head of the party. We had a good conversation. Another head, a good conversation. I hope it's not lost on anyone that when the VP ran for president in the primary, I endorsed her. I hope that's not lost on you.

Brian Lehrer: Liz, that's a good place to start. He was a Harris supporter in the 2020 primary cycle before she dropped out?

Elizabeth Kim: That's correct, but that's also why there was a little bit of political chatter about the mayor being a little late to the party, meaning that he did not endorse Vice President Harris immediately. He did a series of interviews all day on Sunday into the evening, including one on WNYC, in which he didn't say that he'd be backing Harris. Rather, when he was asked, he said he wanted to wait and let the process run its course.

He also wanted to let the senior Democrats talk it through. You hear the mayor there in his remarks say that he did, in fact, reach out and consult some of those top Democrats, including Jay Jacobs, who's the head of the New York Democratic Party. I think part of the chatter was also the fact that the mayor has been very critical of the Biden administration's handling of the border crisis.

We've talked about that a lot, but Harris played a role, a specific role in that. She was assigned to look at the root causes of the migrant influx. Republicans have already started calling her the "border czar." Part of the intrigue around the mayor waiting was the fact that, was there any daylight between him and Harris because she was involved in the border crisis, which he has openly criticized and disagreed with the White House on?

Brian Lehrer: Right. Again, I've mentioned this before, but it's going to come up as they keep calling her the border czar. She was not put in charge of anything having to do with the border per se. It was being in charge of relations with the Central American countries from which many of the recent migrants were coming to see if she could help them improve conditions there to reduce the demand to leave, but that's for another show. Did he say why, by the way, he had endorsed her in 2020? Bernie Sanders was running. Of course, Joe Biden was running. Cory Booker was running. Amy Klobuchar was running. That was some crowded field, but he picked Kamala Harris early on.

Elizabeth Kim: He did not talk about that. Although the mayor did talk about what to him would be the symbolic importance of having the first woman president and also the first Black woman president. The mayor is very, very big on symbolism. He talks about that all the time with reference to his own administration and the people that he's appointed. He felt that this was also a very meaningful candidate and moment for the country.

Brian Lehrer: Which kind of relates to the next topic, which is that you flagged an exchange between the mayor and a reporter on things people have said that the mayor may be framing as racist and somehow former Mayor David Dinkins comes into this conversation, but do you want to set this up?

Elizabeth Kim: Sure. A reporter for The New York Times asked the mayor about something that I think many political observers have viewed as a strategy by Mayor Adams going into his re-election. It's this comparison, as you said, between himself and Mayor David Dinkins. Now, just to remind listeners, Dinkins was the first Black mayor of New York City. He was elected in 1989. It was a very challenging time for the city.

There was a fiscal crisis. There was rising crime. There was racial unrest. When he died in 2020, there was a big reflection on his legacy. One of the issues that people revisited was how race shaped the public perception of Dinkins and also of his record. Now, just to be clear, this was something that people talked about at the time when Dinkins was in office. Now, we have the second Black mayor and Adams clearly wants to bring this to the table.

He wants to bring a discussion about this to the table. Earlier this month, Reverend Al Sharpton, who's a very strong ally of the mayor, he wrote an op-ed in the Daily News where he argued that the mayor's critics sound a lot like Dinkins' critics. He's arguing that the mayor is not being given proper credit for his accomplishments. I'm setting up the question and this was the exchange that the mayor had with the reporter about this.

Brian Lehrer: Before we play the exchange, I actually want to play something that Adams said explicitly comparing himself to Dinkins and then we'll play the exchange with the reporter. Here's Mayor Adams yesterday.

Mayor Adams: I'm Dinkins too and I'm going to remind people of that. I'm going to remind people what they did to David, my mentor, and I'm going to constantly remind them. I'm not going to be quiet because people are uncomfortable with me reminding them of that.

Brian Lehrer: All right. Now, here's the exchange with the reporter around that concept.

Mayor Adams: I did not say the attacks are racist. We're clear on that. Have you ever heard me say that?

Reporter: You suggested quite often.

Mayor Adams: No, no, no, let's be very clear. Did you hear me say the attacks were racist?

Reporter: Those precise words? No.

Mayor Adams: Okay, thank you because accuracy is important and clarity is important. When I make a comparison of someone and I remember how David Dinkins was treated and I make a comparison on what I see, my coverage, which I had the right to do, that's the comparison. It doesn't have to be racist. It's just how people want to depict a person like Dinkins and a person like Eric. It is not that some of the people who have stated they want to run for office are not all white. People are going to come out. My opponents last year were not all white. It was a UN of candidacy.

Brian Lehrer: That's the mayor yesterday. For further context, Liz, you brought a clip of Dinkins in 1994, which was the year he left office after being defeated by Rudy Giuliani. This one's about a minute and 20 seconds. Should I just play it or do you want to set this up in any way?

Elizabeth Kim: Sure, you could just play it, Brian. I thought it would be interesting for listeners to hear exactly how Dinkins himself viewed the role that race played in his mayoralty.

Brian Lehrer: Dinkins 1994.

David Dinkins: In '93, we lost by about the same margin that provided victory in '89. Given the overwhelming Democratic enrollment, and I was a Democratic nominee, I should have won by a larger margin in '89. When the President of the United States came here in '93 and campaigned for me and threw away his prepared text and in his speech at this luncheon, he said that he didn't know why this was such a close contest, given the overwhelming Democratic enrollment. Perhaps it was because some people didn't wish to vote for someone who was different than they. The headlines in the papers the next day said, President Introduces Race into Contest.

The Times Reporter: Like it wasn't already there.

David Dinkins: You see, it's my contention that we will never ever solve the problems of race in this country if we act as though they don't exist. We have to very frankly and candidly confront racism and bigotry and anti-Semitism and homophobia wherever we find it. I think it's important to understand that the least of us will go each of us.

Brian Lehrer: Former Mayor David Dinkins just after being defeated by Rudy Giuliani in 1994, the year Dinkins left office. Liz, any specific comparison that you brought that clip to make between Dinkins and Mayor Adams?

Elizabeth Kim: What I think is very interesting is the fact that you heard in that exchange between the mayor and The Times reporter, he doesn't want to use the word "racist." What's clear is that it's being implied when he says, "I look at how they're treating a person like Dinkins and a person like me," but he doesn't quite want to go there. I will say, I reread Sharpton's op-ed. He doesn't use the word at all either. He's just saying how they treated the first Black mayor and how they treated the second.

Then you listen to what Mayor Dinkins says in that interview. By then, he's no longer mayor. I should say that, for him, this conversation was also very difficult while he was mayor because there is a fear that a mayor who is Black, who complains about his coverage, will be accused of using the race card. I would also argue, given that Dinkins says, "We need to have this discussion. We need to have a frank discussion about race in America," I would almost say that, to me, it's a very interesting topic.

When the mayor first raised this, and he raised this, I think, in his first year, he started talking about this. He started talking about it by saying that the press was largely white. Because of that, they didn't quite understand his experience as a working-class Black-elected. The mayor is kind of tiptoeing around it, but I would say that I would invite the mayor to have a discussion about that and to be more frank about what exactly does he see in the coverage that he thinks is shaped by race or motivated by race. The Times reporter was trying to push him in that direction, but you can see that he doesn't want to say it. It's also understandable why he doesn't want to go there.

Brian Lehrer: Yet, he calls himself Dinkins 2, Dinkins No. 2. Listeners, Black listeners right now, do you have an impression of Mayor Adams' treatment by politicians who criticize him and the press coverage that he gets that relates to his race? Any Black listeners want to weigh in on this, especially in New York City, especially if you voted in the 2021 mayoral primary, either for Eric Adams or for someone else? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Curious how this is landing out there with some of you. 212-433-9692, call or text.

One thing I was thinking, Liz, on this topic is that a difference between Mayor Dinkins and Mayor Adams is that Dinkins got criticized for and Giuliani ran very heavily on, when he defeated Dinkins, being too anti-police allegedly even if he wasn't. Maybe that was associated with his race, was the implication, though Giuliani never said it out loud. Adams gets most of his flack from the left regarding police policy and a bunch of other things. His challengers politically, who are starting to line up for next year, generally come from his left and on policing centrally as well as other issues. How does the mayor argue--

Elizabeth Kim: How does he square that, yes.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, that racism could be a factor or imply that racism could be a factor even if he's seen as the opposite of Dinkins on perhaps the most relevant issue?

Elizabeth Kim: That's an excellent question, Brian, and no one has put that to him yet. It's very important to understand that the landscape of 1989 is very different from the landscape we have now, particularly also when it comes to the number of Black-electeds in New York, both statewide and in the city. As you point out, some of his sharpest critics, they're coming from the left. Also, some of them happen to be Black.

Some of them happen to be saying that, "Mayor Adams, your policies on policing is hurting the Black community. Whereas with Dinkins, that critique, it was unfair in part. Because if you look at the policies, Dinkins expanded the NYPD in response to rising crime. There was a record expansion. He went up to Albany and he asked for the money to increase the size of the NYPD.

Brian Lehrer: A tax increase specifically targeted, earmarked for NYPD. He also was the mayor who first hired William Bratton, the controversial and legendary police commissioner under Giuliani, but Mayor Dinkins first hired him to be what was then transit police chief before the agencies merged. All of that is history too. Let's take a phone call. Although people at the time said the city council pushed Dinkins into the Safe Streets, Safe City police buildup, but that was a controversy at the time. Nevertheless, he did go to Albany to ask for that tax increase and got it and built up the police force to, more or less, its current size of over 30,000 cops, which it's never gone back from. Mark in Harlem, you're on WNYC. Hi, Mark.

Mark: Hey, everybody. How are you doing? I was just saying briefly that I've noticed this attitude amongst my white friends, middle-class white friends. I know I live on the Upper East Side, but I'm from Harlem originally. I just moved up here. They would often say, "Look at de Blasio." I like de Blasio. They say, "Well, I'm not sure. I don't really like de Blasio that much," and they would complain about him. We always saw it when I'm from Harlem, my friends in Harlem, that, "Well, it's funny he's got a Black wife."

Then I see those same vague, uncomfortable criticisms of Adams as well where no one can really point out anything about Adams that is bad, but they just had this attitude, "Well, it's this sort of thing that I think Mayor Adams was talking about." People are dancing around the racial issues. Mayor Dinkins did speak out about it. I'm sorry, but I have to be frank. Giuliani was someone who was racially polarizing. These issues were brought to the forefront with Mayor Giuliani. Of course, his subsequent actions during the last election cycle have proven that out, this whole tension.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, he was definitely polarizing at the time.

Mark: Right.

Brian Lehrer: How do you fit into what you've been saying, if you do, you don't have to, this idea that Adams is more Giuliani-like than he is Dinkins-like when it comes to the police? Not 100%. I don't want to over-paint Adams in that respect, but you know what I mean.

Mark: I don't really perceive that.

Brian Lehrer: Go ahead.

Mark: Yes, I know what you're talking about. You interviewed Mayor Adams before he became mayor and you brought him to the forefront of attention for me. At the time when I listened to him, I said, "This guy seems to be more balanced. He's not really anti-police. He's not super radical on it." Right. To me, I felt that that balanced attitude is what's needed. This is a 67% minority city. I have noticed that the police themselves have totally changed than when I was a kid.

Brian Lehrer: That's really interesting.

Mark: I'm 70 now. This is a different police force. The minority participation, the participation of women. It's really different. I think that we are in a transitionary phase for all of these issues and he's reflecting that.

Brian Lehrer: Mark, to your original point, I'm curious if you're seeing the same thing with respect to Kamala Harris leading up to her presidential candidacy and now where a lot of people, maybe a lot of white people in your framing, have this vague, "I don't know what it is exactly, but I just don't like her style."

Mark: Exactly. I really think that that's the case too. Look at the guy from Tennessee, I forgot his name, yesterday, where he came out with this really stupid excuse, "Well, they picked her. Picking a Black person means you're excluding other minorities." Then the fact is that she's--

Brian Lehrer: She's also South Asian.

Mark: -half Tamil Indian, which is if you know the politics of South India, the Tamils, they have this whole racial thing with Northern Indians, right? He's trying to reach and struggle for something to excuse away this seed of racism that's there or just don't feel comfortable or don't like.

Brian Lehrer: I don't know if he's the same one who said she's a DEI hire, which is-

Mark: Right, that guy. That's the person they go to.

Brian Lehrer: -about as explicitly racist as you can get, it seems to me, about the current vice president of the United States, who's been an elected US senator and elected state DA or attorney general. Mark, thank you. Great call. We have a few more people on this. Kyla in the Bronx. Is it Kyla or Kayla? Hi, you're on WNYC.

Kayla: Hi, it's Kayla.

Brian Lehrer: Hello.

Kayla: Hi.

Brian Lehrer: You have the floor. Go.

Kayla: Oh okay. [chuckles] Sorry, I haven't really done this before. I was listening. I just got upset just even hearing a comparison between Mayor Dinkins and Eric Adams. I grew up in New York with Mayor Dinkins. I grew up in the Bronx. Because of the kind of mayor that Mayor Dinkins was, he created opportunities for people in my neighborhood in terms of opportunities around free programs for the youth.

I was able to learn how to play tennis. I played tennis all through high school. Just in general, Mayor Dinkins had-- Well, as a child, that was my impression, but he had a positive impact on all of New York and especially people of color. In some way, we felt seen. With Eric Adams, I don't feel that at all. I feel like he's a mayor for the cops. That's how I feel. I did not vote for him.

I heard that you spoke with the last caller a little bit about there's a comparison with Kamala Harris as well and I feel similarly. I am of Jamaican descent, which Kamala's father is from Jamaica as well. As a woman, there are all these things I share. I share a lot of things in common with her in terms of her background, but I don't believe that she has my interests at heart. It's really difficult for me to see that she's now the presumptive nominee.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, that's interesting. Because she was a prosecutor and her history with respect to that, putting people in prison?

Kayla: I think that's a big part of it. I think with what happened with Ms. Massey, what came out yesterday about Ms. Massey, Sonya Massey, we're seeing that juxtaposed with the first Black woman presidential nominee and it's absurd.

Brian Lehrer: Sonya Massey, the woman who was killed in her home by a police officer after she called 911 for help. At least that police officer has been fired and charged, I understand. What would you say, Kayla, to the previous caller, Mark, who has seen a lot? He said he was 70 and thinks that the NYPD is a lot different now than it was under Giuliani. It was the comparison he was making. More people of color, better practices.

Kayla: I think it's very interesting because I'm 41 and what I have seen over the course of my life is there has been more representation in many areas of American society where you are seeing more women, more people of color who have taken positions like that. I myself have family who are-- I have a female Black cousin who is a member of the NYPD. I do understand that a lot of people of color have joined the force. Many of them have good intentions to try to represent the communities they came from, but I think it is extremely hard.

I think it's the framework of policing in the United States. It makes it almost impossible for me as a Black woman to feel safe here. I think that maybe Mark came from a generation where-- Because we didn't see representation, just seeing representation means so much for him and for his generation. What we say in my community is all skinfolk ain't kinfolk. What we say is Black faces in high places will not save you. I think that I have seen some presidential nominees that were much more my speed. Some of them were not Black and some of them were not women.

Brian Lehrer: Kayla, I'm going to leave it there. Thank you for calling. I appreciate it. It sounds like you were a first-time caller. Please call us again.

Kayla: Yes. All right. Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: Liz Kim, our lead Eric Adams reporter, waiting patiently as we have those conversations with a couple of callers. There are more people waiting on the line who we can continue that conversation with, except that we're running out of time in the segment. Liz, see the important dialogue that you sparked there?

Elizabeth Kim: Well, I think that what Kayla said was very interesting. It's touching to hear her talk about what Dinkins means to her, what Dinkins' legacy means to her, this idea of creating opportunity for lower and middle-income New Yorkers. That is in large part why Mayor Adams wants to tie himself to Dinkins. It's not just about the way that he feels the coverage has been unfair, but he'd really much like to associate himself with having those accomplishments as well.

He has made some policies that have helped poor New Yorkers. He got more funding for NYCHA. He's expanded youth employment. He often talks about this. He's expanded the number of city contracts with minority and women-owned businesses. There's a "but" coming. What is undercutting, these are good achievements, but the problem is the budget cuts. The narrative of the budget cuts has really hurt the mayor on this issue.

Budget cuts to libraries, to schools, to social programs, cutbacks to the pre-K program, which was a signature policy initiative for the city. That's the problem he's facing right now is that, yes, he does have a good record of helping lower-income New Yorkers, especially Black and Latino New Yorkers, but it's bumping up against the thing about budget cuts. Critics of the mayor--

Brian Lehrer: Which agencies get them and which agencies like the NYPD really don't, right?

Elizabeth Kim: Correct. Don't think that his critics and his opponents have not seized on that.

Brian Lehrer: One more issue before we run out of time from yesterday's Adams news conference. The controversy over a homeless shelter that I believe the mayor proposed for Bensonhurst. Now, neighborhoods often object to shelter sightings. Remind everyone of why this proposal has become especially newsworthy, and then we'll play the mayor answering a question about that.

Elizabeth Kim: Sure. This is a shelter that is under construction in Bensonhurst and it is the only shelter that is in this neighborhood. The district is represented by Susan Zhuang. She's a first-term Democratic City Council member. Just to give you a sense of her district, it's Bay Ridge, Dyker Heights, Bath Beach. This is a more conservative-leaning swath of South Brooklyn. What happened last week was that she and other members of her community, they staged a very early morning protest against the ongoing construction.

There was video taken. It's a very chaotic scene. You see protesters are tussling with police officers. One of them is Zhuang. In the middle of the melee, she ends up biting a police officer. She gets arrested. She's charged with second-degree assault. She does get released the same day. As we know, Brian, the mayor has been a staunch defender of the police, especially when it comes to what he sees as inappropriate conduct of protestors toward police officers. Naturally, he's going to be posed the question, "How did you feel about a council member biting a cop?"

Brian Lehrer: Here is the mayor.

Mayor Adams: I was very clear, as I'm clear, whenever someone attacks a police officer. I said it was inappropriate to bite a police officer. I was clear on that, but I'm also clear that she's always been supportive of law enforcement. I clearly acknowledge that and what she has done and what she will continue to do. She was arrested for the action. I stated I was going to reach out and speak with her and I did just that.

The action of biting a police officer caused an arrest. She was not treated any differently than someone that would assault the police officer. I know there's a lot of passion around these issues and topics around homeless shelters, the placement of homeless shelters, everyone acknowledges that we have this crisis. I have yet to see one person raise their hand and say, "House them here."

Brian Lehrer: Even in this answer, when this issue has been circulating around him for a week now, he seemed to be a little bit soft on the council member, though she actually bit a police officer allegedly. I guess there are videos and photos out there with his bloodied arm to prove it, but it's not the same tone of antagonism that he used towards other people who would physically attack police officers. Is that the point?

Elizabeth Kim: Exactly, Brian. Don't think that people didn't notice that. The reality is this is a district that is politically important to the mayor. This is a council member who is one of the few moderate Democrats on the council that is important to him. I think what people were getting at was, yes, he had a softer tone toward her saying it's inappropriate is not the same language he has used in the past against, for example, pro-Palestinian protestors who threw bottles or spit at police. The mayor was very angry when that happened.

Brian Lehrer: Last thing on this though. The mayor, from what I can tell, reading the transcript of the news conference yesterday, does take what's considered the progressive position on shelters. Honestly, I think if I have my history right, this actually goes back to the aforementioned Mayor David Dinkins, where there is so much concentration of things like homeless shelters and homeless shelters in particular in mostly Black and Latino, mostly low-income neighborhoods.

The argument started to be among progressives, "Look, homelessness is because of overall conditions in the city. Different neighborhoods should have their share of homeless shelters like they have their share or should have their share of all kinds of city facilities. The mayor does take that position. I think it's fair to say that he's on the progressive side of the underlying issue there. Would you agree?

Elizabeth Kim: That's right, Brian. The mayor is in a very difficult position. Like other mayors before him, there is a tremendous amount of backlash to the sighting of shelters. What he's trying to argue is they need to be equally distributed across the city. I think where you do see him being a little bit more sympathetic though is, in this district, he acknowledges that this is an emotional issue for people. I've seen him even at the same press conference where he takes a much harder line where if it's a more progressive district where he gets a lot angrier that these people are rejecting the shelter. He says, "Well, where do you want me to put them?"

Brian Lehrer: Like Upper East Side, Upper West Side, something like that.

Elizabeth Kim: Yes.

Brian Lehrer: Then to Bensonhurst, he has a different tone. All right. We leave it there for today as we're out of time with our lead Eric Adams reporter Elizabeth Kim, who comes on with us most Wednesdays with excerpts and analyses of and to take your phone calls about Mayor Adams' weekly Tuesday news conference. Thanks, Liz.

Elizabeth Kim: Thanks, Brian.

 

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