Covid Hospitalization Rates Fall + Mayoral Candidates Get Matching Funds

Local News 

• The number of patients in New York State hospitalized with COVID-19 dropped below 4,000 for the first time since December 1.
• The controversial Gowanus rezoning plan, which has been stalled since January, could go forward as soon as this week.
• Mayor Bill De Blasio criticized the police officer in Minnesota who killed Daunte Wright at the same time the NYPD promoted as head of the Brooklyn North Detective Bureau a captain who had previously shot and killed a civilian, claimed it was an accident, and kept his job.
• The recent law legalizing marijuana in New York is estimated to make 150,000 new people eligible for having their criminal records expunged.
• Transportation advocates say the proposed bike lane for the Brooklyn Bridge is too narrow.
• Jacobin covered NYC-DSA’s campaign to tax the rich and its effect on this year’s New York State budget.

Elections

• The Working Families Party made a ranked-choice endorsement for mayor, placing Scott Stringer first, Dianne Morales second, and Maya Wiley third.
• The latest round of campaign finance disclosures for the mayoral race saw four new candidates—Maya Wiley, Andrew Yang, Dianne Morales, and Kathryn Garcia—qualify for matching funds. Eric Adams and Scott Stringer, who had already qualified, still lead the pack in fundraising, with $7.5 million and $6.8 million on hand respectively. Only Morales claimed an average donation of under $100 (specifically, $74).
• Shaun Donovan also claimed matching funds in the mayoral race, but he is waiting on the City’s Campaign Finance Board’s ongoing review of whether donations from a super PAC funded by Donovan’s father ought to count as in-kind donations to his campaign. Donovan’s average donation of $641 was higher than any other mayoral candidate’s except former Wall Street executive Ray McGuire.
• Tusk Strategies—a lobbying firm with deep connections to Michael Bloomberg, the Police Benevolent Association, and Uber—is running Andrew Yang’s mayoral campaign. Yang’s campaign senior staff are all employed by Tusk, not his campaign, raising questions over whether his mayoralty would be beholden to their lobbying interests.
• Although Andrew Yang’s campaign website includes a long list of policies, many notably lack detail.
• In an interview on housing policy and land use, Dianne Morales spoke in favor of halting all massive rezonings until such point as the Uniform Land Review Procedure is reformed.
• Democratic political consultant Bruce Gyory released an extensive analysis of potential citywide voting blocs in the 2021 primary and the chances of the top eight candidates for mayor.
• In reviewing the special elections that have used ranked-choice voting so far this year, the Board of Elections says that the system is working well but that it will still increase efforts to educate voters ahead of the June primary.
• In response to Rana Abdelhamid’s Justice Democrats-supported campaign against Representative Carolyn Maloney (NY-12, Upper East Side), the Chair of the New York State Democratic Committee, Jay Jacobs, took a break from defending Governor Andrew Cuomo to send an angry email about DSA, of which Abdelhamid is a member, but which has as of yet not actually endorsed the campaign.