NYC NOW - Midday News: Heat Wave to Continue Into This Week, City Preserves Elizabeth Street Garden, and Final Push Before Primary Day

Episode Date: June 23, 2025

New York City is entering its first heat wave of the summer season, with temperatures expected to remain dangerously high through the week. Meanwhile, the Adams administration is dropping its plan to build housing on the Elizabeth Street Garden, preserving the green space and seeking alternative development sites. Plus, with Primary Day tomorrow, candidates for mayor, comptroller, and public advocate are making their final appeals to voters after record early turnout. WNYC’s Brian Lehrer and senior politics reporter Brigid Bergin have the latest.

Welcome to NYC now, your source for local news in and around New York City from WMYC. It's Monday, June 23rd. Here's the midday news from Michael Hill. The heat is here after unusually cool temperatures in recent weeks, the city's experiencing its first heat wave this summer. The region is meteorologists expect temperatures to get into the high 90s and possibly reach the hundreds later this week. Alfonso Kiroz of Khan-Hid says the company is ready for. the extreme heat. Well, we prepare all year long for days like this. So this is really go time for us. And we have beefed up our system in the past year. We've invested over $2.3 billion into the system

just for this coming summer. He wants to remind customers to conserve their electricity during the week. Conned will be watching the system very closely and has mobilized crews for any allergies that might happen. The Elizabeth Street Garden will stay where it is. First, Deputy Mayor Randy Mastrow says the Adams administration is dropping its fight to build affordable housing for seniors on top of the downtown green space. It's a big reversal from the city. The mayor had supported the plan to build housing on the city-owned lot despite pushback from locals who wanted to save the garden. Mastro is defending the change. He says the city has listened to the community and will develop other sites. into housing instead.

To be truly effective in government, you have to have a head and a heart. You have to listen to communities. You have to serve the public. The garden had been facing eviction since March and had stopped paying rent to the city. 92 with some sunshine out there, but it feels like 103, 104 extreme heat warning

until 8 tomorrow night, sunny and 95 today with a light wind. Stay close. There's more after the break. Tomorrow is primary day for the New York City election for mayor, controller, and public advocate. And candidates are making their closing arguments to voters after nine days of record early voting turnout. Joining us now with the latest WNIC's Brian Lera and senior politics reporter Bridget Berg and Bridget. Now that early voting is over, what more do we know about turnout so far? Well, Michael, I can tell you that by our calculation, 385,184 ballots have been cast in all nine days of early voting.

That's very specific. It doesn't include affidavit ballots. And that is more than double the number of early votes in 2021. Now, we're going to be digging more into these numbers today. My colleague Joe Hong, our data report and I have been working together on this. Since last week, we're going to create another set of maps. to look at where early voting turnout has been. But what I can tell you is what we've been reporting since last week,

early turnout among 25 to 34-year-olds has been very strong, and that turnout continues to be unusually strong. We'll have more on that later today on gothamous.com. Yeah, and I'll jump in on this. What I don't think we know yet from the early voter stats is whether these are the same younger people who have voted before, just voting earlier, or if it's different people, new voters, And it would be a very good sign indeed for Zerunam Dani if many of these younger voters are first-timers.

But, you know, progressives always hope for this moment, and it rarely actually comes. When the young voter turnout is big enough to make that progressive difference, look at the long history of progressive dems in presidential primaries who couldn't beat the establishment candidates. Bernie Sanders twice. Howard Dean versus John Kerry. Jerry Brown versus Bill Clinton. Jesse Jackson in 1984 and 88. Ted Kennedy versus Carter in 1980. And I could keep going back. There are some notable exceptions. AOC in 2018, beating establishment Democrat Joe Crowley is one.

Bill de Blasio in 2013. But even locally, Assembly Member Mamdani is very effective on social media, for example. But so were some candidates in 2021. That year, Eric Adams famously said, the election isn't decided by people on social media. It's decided by people on Social Security. And we know how that turned out. So we'll see if this year is any different. Bryant, last week you had two guests on making the case for and against Andrew Cuomo.

Who were they? And what did they say ahead of the Brooklyn Democrats? They were, former Mayor Bill de Blasio, and Assembly member Rodneyes Bichott Hermelin, head of the Brooklyn Democrats. Now, de Blasio said Donald Trump is Andrew Cuomo's role model. He used those words, role model, in that he says Trump and Cuomo both run campaigns of fear, and both came to the conclusion that the Me Too movement was over so they could get elected despite their documented behavior toward women.

Now, in supporting Cuomo, Assemblywoman Herman kind of backed up that sentiment about Me Too. She said she believes most people, quote, have either forgiven him, Cuomo, or that doesn't matter so much to voters and what matters is what's in front of them, unquote. notably she had to renounce her own call in 2021 for him to resign and had to renounce as a leader of the assembly, the assembly's own investigation in 2021 that concluded there was, quote, overwhelming evidence that Cuomo committed sexual harassment. Hermelin now says she questions the evidence and also said the assembly was, quote, acting also with emotion because it was at the height of putting legislation against sexual harassment, unquote. Now, you know, that might make some women cringe, dismissing findings around sexism as emotional, and Hermelin cited emotion as a main reason to support Cuomo today.

Campaign of fear, yes, justified in her view. She said, quote, we are all scared on issues like ice raids and social security and Medicaid. And listeners, if you want to roll back and listen to Friday segments, you can hear how DiBlasio dismissed many of the Cuomo. years liberal accomplishments as him being forced into it. And Hermelin saying, as much as people may want to despise Cuomo, she said, he is tough and strong and knows how to get things done. They had different takes on Assembly Member Mom Donnie. So go back and listen if you want to hear that 20 minutes each take. Bridget, what did you hear from candidates in this final weekend of early

voting? Yeah, I was out yesterday and Governor Cuomo had a busier public schedule. than normal. He spoke at the Christian Cultural Center in Brooklyn yesterday on Flatlands Avenue. It's one of the city's largest black churches. And then he addressed a meeting of the Catholic Council of Electrical Workers, a group within the IBEW union, that's the electrical workers union, and gave his pitch that the city's in crisis needs his kind of experience. Talking to reporters afterwards, he said initially he was planning to vote early yesterday, but decided to wait until tomorrow to make the point that it's important to turnout to vote, even in what could be 100 degree heat. So I asked him what he made of the early turnout numbers so far, especially since we have seen

such a large number of young early voters. I don't think that's what you've seen. I think you've seen a high turnout across the board, are the numbers that I hear. And that's a good thing. The higher the turnout, the better. I think you will see a high turnout because I think you will see a high turnout because I think. think New Yorkers are scared and they're worried. Now, I've talked to some analysts who say, actually, a higher turnout might not be so good

for Cuomo because that could be some of those new voters Brian was talking about. But we won't know that, of course, until we see what the full electorate looks like at the close of polls tomorrow. I'll note that Cuomo added another event to his schedule yesterday, a children's event in Burrell Park, clearly an effort to reach out to some voters there who could be very important to, you know, push it. him over the finish line. Richard, what about the other candidates? What were they doing yesterday?

Well, everybody was out campaigning on their own, but then last night, sort of the everybody but Cuomo slate was together for a rally backed by the Working Families Party. I'll note that State Senator Zulner Mirey, who is part of the working family's slate, skipped that event, which was actually in his district because of some local controversy over the space where it was being held. But there had been some drama. within the slate over the weekend. Our Elizabeth Kim reported earlier that city council speaker and mayoral candidate Adrian Adams sort of took a dig at Mamdani on Saturday at Reverend El Sharpton's National Action Network. But last night, these candidates really were trying to project a united front, arguing the only way to defeat Cuomo was to rank the WFP slate.

And here's Adrian Adams making that point last night at the rally. there is unity going on up in here because of this slate Andrew Cuomo will be defeated and Michael I think in here there's a lot of energy in that room last night the thing lasted a solid two hours about a dozen speakers council member Chi Jose kicked things off New York Attorney General Tish James brought it home of course the candidate that so many people in the room came to see was Mumdani who said his campaign was the one that no one

expected to see at this point and as they were trying to to sign people up for more volunteer canvas shifts today. He said this. We have gone now from the margin of error to the margin of effort. If we want to win this race, it is in our hands. He's really just asking his volunteers to leave it all on the field. And I should note, there is a new Emerson college poll out this morning showing for the first time. I'm Donnie eclipsing Cuomo in a ranked choice tally. So this race continues to tighten as we get closer to primary. day. WNMAC's Brian Lair and Bridget Berg and joining us the

preview of what's to come tomorrow. Thank you both. You bet. Thanks. Thanks for listening. This is NYC now from WMYC. Check us out for updates every weekday, three times a date for the latest news headlines and occasional deep dives.

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