NYC NOW - Midday news: Former Newark Mayor Sharpe James Dies, Cuomo Fined for Campaign Violation, and Dems Prep for NJ Governor’s Race

Episode Date: May 12, 2025

Former Newark Mayor Sharpe James has died at 89. Meanwhile, the NYC Campaign Finance Board fined Andrew Cuomo’s campaign more than $600,000 for allegedly coordinating with a PAC. The board also approved $1.5 million in matching funds. Also, in the NBA playoffs, the Knicks host Game 4 against the Boston Celtics Monday night at MSG. Plus, WNYC and NJ Spotlight News will host a forum with the Democratic candidates for New Jersey governor. Anchor Briana Vannozzi joins us with a preview.

Welcome to NYC now, your source for local news in and around New York City from WMYC. It's Monday, May 12th. Here's the midday news from Michael Hill. The Jersey officials say former Newark Mayor Sharp James has died. James was 89. He served five terms as the mayor of Newark between 1986 and 2006. In 2008, he was convicted of fraud and served 18 months in a federal prison. his statement, Newark's current mayor as Baraka credited James with helping establish

Prudential Center, the New Jersey Performing Arts Center. Baraka also called James, quote, a warrior of our city. New Jersey Senate Majority Leader Teresa Ruiz also praised James calling him an iconic and influential leader. It's good news, bad news today for Andrew Cuomo's mayoral campaign. The Democrat received his first payment of public matching money from the New York City Campaign Finance Board today. The board approved more than one and a half million dollars for his campaign committee. However, his campaign was also fined more than $600,000 for what the campaign watchdog says is illegal coordination with a political action committee. The board says an ad distributed on May 4th by a group called Fix the City included information the campaign

published on its website. Cuomo spokesperson denies any wrongdoing and says the campaign plans to appeal the decision. The Campaign Finance Board's investigation continues. The New York Knicks are back at the Garden tonight, looking to rebound after a tough game three lost to Boston. The series stands at two wins for the Knicks, one for the Celtics. And fans know this is a pivotal moment. Game four starts at 7.30 tonight. Allison Stewart will be talking about the Knicks coming up in just a minute or two on all of it.

69 and mostly sunny right now. Sunny today in a high of 74 with a light wind. This is WNMIC. NYC and NJ Spotlight News are coming together to bring you a discussion with the Democrats running to succeed New Jersey, Governor Phil Murphy. It will be similar to what you may have heard last Wednesday when we had the Republican candidates on stage. Join us now to talk through what to expect is my co-moderator for tonight, Briano Vinozzi, NJ Spotlight News, anchor. Brianna, first of all, okay, we know five Democrats will be on-stead.

tonight. Tell us who they are. Well, I will note, I hope it's not exactly like last week, because as you'll recall, it got a little ruckus. But we've got five candidates, and I should mention these are the candidates who have qualified through New Jersey's Election Law Enforcement Commission to participate. Basically, they needed to have raised a certain amount of money, a threshold, to qualify for the state sanction debate. They are two sitting Congress members, two sitting mayors of the state's largest cities and the former state Senate president, Steve Sweeney, Newark, Newark, Mayor, Newark, Raus Baraka, who I'm sure many folks, if they weren't familiar with him, they certainly got familiar with him this weekend. Newark, of course, is the state's largest city.

Jersey City mayor, Steve Fullup, he was the first to enter the race actually two years ago. Congresswoman Mikey Cheryl and Congressman Josh Gottheimer. Now, we're not calling this a debate. Tell us why and what's different about this format. This is a conversation with the candidates. And this is actually a format that's worked quite well for us in the past, really leaving this to be a more free-flowing, fluid conversation, so that candidates can't come in with their canned 60-second answers.

where we don't get into the depth of policy discussion that we want to see and that we believe voters want to see in order to make an informed decision. This is a very important race. And so we are, of course, in charge, Michael and I, of leading us through these topics and issues and ensuring that every candidate gets a fair amount of time to state their policy platform and, of course, rebut if need to. this will not be that sort of old school style of debate. We really want to get some of the personality out of who these candidates are and really learn about why they stand for the issues that they do and what are their proposed goals and how are they actually going to go about it. You know, that's really difficult to get to in a 30-second rebuttal or a 60-second response. So we really hope that that's what we get tonight is a really robust,

of ideas, and of course that the audience gets a lot out of it before they head to the polls. Robust versus raucous. Now, you mentioned that at the top, and we saw what happened last week. Are you expecting, are we expecting that kind of exchanges, those kinds of exchanges between among these five Democrats? This is probably, I mean, honestly, it is the most contentious race in the last 40 years, gubernatorial race. that is, in the last 40 years for New Jersey, it's certainly the most, one of the most crowded. But I don't. I think it'll be pretty civil. On the Republican side, you know, these folks have really been going after each other quite a bit. Although we have seen the gloves come off more recently,

particularly folks who are targeting Congresswoman Mikey Sherrill, who's the perceived frontrunner, at least if you go by the Rutgers-Eagleton poll and by party support. So I do think there's going to be some fire exchanges, but I'm just putting this out into the ether now that this will be decorum will be maintained. Fingers crossed, we should say, right, Brianna. That's right. All right, Brianna Vanos and I are moderating the discussion tonight. You can hear it on WNYC and you can see it on NJ Spotlight News. It's seven, Brianna.

Thank you somewhat for being up early with us this morning. Absolutely. I'll see you later, my friend. All right. All right, great. Thanks for listening. This is NYC Now from WNYC. Check us out for updates every weekday,

three times a date for the latest news headlines and occasional deep dives. And subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. NYC.