Craig McCarthy, New York Post City Hall bureau chief Interview

Craig McCarthy speaks with Mendte in the Morning about the NYC Mayoral debate last night and the surprising candidate that stood out to him.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Craig McCarthy in the house and the crowd goes wild.

Speaker 2 (00:02):
Hey Craig, Hey, thanks for having me this morning.

Speaker 1 (00:06):
Of course I was a wild one last night. Reminded
me of an old school prize fight in the garden.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Yeah, it was definitely a spicy final debate, still a
little bit crowded. With seven people on stage there. They
really couldn't whittle it down much more from the nine
of last week.

Speaker 1 (00:23):
Yeah, it was a mess, but it seemed to get
pretty personal pretty early courtesy of Mondani. He seemed to
be going all in on the character thing.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
You know, he kept attacking Andrew Cuomo's character. You know,
he was he's the seconds in second place, consistent polling.
He's got to go after the front runner here, and
Andrew Cuomo. But you know who really stood out to
me and said us a lot of people I spoke
with is Is brad Lander. He got this strange endorsement
from the New York Times, this panel of fifteen people

(00:55):
they created instead of endorsing as a paper. And he
seemed pretty unleashed last night. I mean, he landed kind
of the harshest attacks on Cuomo and it really little
looks like it had Cuomo rattled for a bit.

Speaker 1 (01:09):
I don't doubt We're talking to Craig mccarthney, who was,
of course City Hall bureau chief for the New York Post.
The thing about Lander is he's had the cleanest ride
so far because he's managed to say outside of the scrum,
I believe Mondanni and Cuomo have eaten up most of
the negative headlines and that might be the off ramp
that voters are looking for. I mean, if we were
handicapping this like a horse raced, who do you think

(01:30):
has the momentum right now?

Speaker 2 (01:32):
Well, at this point, I feel like we don't really
know whether Adrian Adams or Lander, who've constantly been in
the third and fourth place in the polls here, will
pick up any steam. It's really been Mandanni having all
the momentum since over the last few months. I mean,
I've always kind of thought that Lander was sort of
the dark horse here, right he wasn't He could probably

(01:54):
grab a bunch of votes from the mac donnie camp
because that, you know, as a second and third choice,
but a lot of people might go for him because
he's not a socialist and not giving everything away for free.
He has citywide experience. He's the controller right now. But
you know, it hasn't seemed to happen. It seems like
Manzannie kind of outflanked him on the left and kind

(02:14):
of stole all the oxygen of what he's seemingly looking
to do over the last year and gearing up this run.

Speaker 1 (02:20):
Yeah, no question about that. But it is fascinating that
we find ourselves in a moment where something like not
a socialist could actually be a bumper sticker.

Speaker 2 (02:28):
Now. Yeah, I mean, listen, the slate of candidates are
or definitely something to discuss, you know, for classes in
the future here, because I mean it's you know what,
we it's a massively crowded field. I mean we have
Andrew Colemo on his comeback tour. I mean people have

(02:48):
reported this that sources close to his campaign, you know,
basically knew that they weren't going to come in and
win the thing. They knew they just had to kind
of survive it and coast on his name recognition. Yeah,
and kind of you know, just kind of lead with
that managerial skill. And then you have Mandonni, who comes
from a you know, his mother being a famous director,

(03:08):
with these you know, fresh videos and kind of pitching
these of loads of freebies and giving all these things away.
I mean, I think the one thing too that you know,
when it took to pundits last night and we published
this story end of this morning, like who kind of won? Hears?
You know, I think the biggest knock obviously, aside from
all of the freebies that man Donnie wants to give away,

(03:30):
it's just like how would you pay for this?

Speaker 1 (03:32):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (03:32):
And you know there's he didn't take the time to
even really explain how he would do that because there's
massive hurdles to get these things done. I mean, everything
has to go through Albany, So I mean he just
kind of stuck took to those sound bites instead of
really trying to talk to voters. And some of the
pundits I talked to didn't know if that was the
best thing for him, since he is the warmth of momentum.

Speaker 1 (03:53):
Yeah, what I what I think he's doing. We're talking
to Craig McCarthy is he seems to be running for
class president. It's Instagram. It's free stuff. You know, We're
gonna have free pizza on Tuesdays or something. It's been
funny to watch But that's the thing I always tell
people to be weary of is deliverables, and he's not
really talking to you to things that are deliverable. I

(04:14):
mean here in New York, when you talk about costs,
I mean, I don't even believe they have a poem
on the Statue of Liberty anymore. I think it says
this space for rent. So I think we're gonna run
into us. I think we're gonna have a fiscal challenge,
is what I would say. But if I was, if
I was a betting man, it's gonna be real close.
Actually I am not gonna be a betting man. I
will defer to the experts, that being you, Craig.

Speaker 2 (04:35):
Yeah, I think it's gonna be I think it's gonna
be close. I you know, listen the mayor's polls coming
out next week. That's the one that had Eric Adams
winning in twenty twenty one. That's the one we're all
looking for. That is basically the roadmap of what's gonna happen.
I think it's gonna be close. I have not seen
anything in which it's close where they have ma'n Donny

(04:57):
really in the margin of error. And I think that's
you know, listen, the Cuomo camp is definitely sweating. They're
they're in the final stretch here, eleven days now until
the primary. But you know, you know, we talked about
the fiscal you know, the fiscal cliss that the city
is about to face. I mean, experts I talked to
are have been saying for the last year that the

(05:17):
city is really facing a budget deficit in the next
few years and they don't know how they're going to
rectify it. So I think anybody that gets in is
going to have a large challenge. I think if man
Donnie gets in, he's in for a world of surprise
that a lot of the things he's pushing we will
not be able to afford. Ye.

Speaker 1 (05:33):
So yep, reality listen, I've love watching it. It's been
a great show and this was epic. We'll always have this.
Craig McCarthy, thank you for a few minutes this morning.
Thanks for having me the best. There he goes, the
great Craig McCarthy.