Unsuspecting New Yorkers were enjoying their Saturday mornings, checking the surf report and nibbling their rainbow flagels, when the New York Times's editorial board announced it had endorsed three white guys ahead of the congressional primary next week.
If you haven't been dialed in to your district's race, the interview transcripts are a useful resource, even if the endorsements themselves are pretty flimsy—for such "crucial primaries," two are under 400 words, which is roughly what we need to critique a salad.
We will set aside Rep. Jerry Nadler and Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney in the 12th and 17th districts, and focus on the Times's pick of Dan Goldman in the newly drawn NY-10, which is especially half-assed.
There is no mention of the four women the board interviewed—Councilmember Carlina Rivera, former member of Congress Elizabeth Holtzman, Assemblymember Jo Anne Simon, and Assemblymember Yuh-Line Niou—all of whom have actual experience of representing New Yorkers, something Goldman notably lacks. Rep. Mondaire Jones is cited as someone else that voters should perhaps consider, but a lot of words are dedicated to waving away the fact that Jones moved to the district from Westchester so he could run.
Best we can tell, the Times thinks Goldman, a former federal prosecutor, should represent Lower Manhattan and North Brooklyn because he's not one of his more progressive-leaning opponents.
"Mr. Goldman’s law enforcement experience offers a valuable perspective at a time when New Yorkers are concerned about public safety," the endorsement notes, which is a weird thing to say when he wasn't even asked about NYPD funding, or police accountability, or the public perception of crime vs. reality—you know, New York City public safety stuff.
Goldman was also given an opportunity to respond to an interview with Hamodia, in which he stated that he would not be opposed to a state law banning abortion in some cases. "I was in an interview where I was getting a series of lengthy hypothetical questions. And, frankly, the lawyer in me felt like I was back in law school with the Socratic method," Goldman explained, in a pretty succinct description of why we perhaps do not need one more Ivy League-educated attorney in Congress.
Many of the candidate interviews featured the same questions: Should the filibuster be abolished? Should the Supreme Court get more justices? What's the average age of a U.S. senator? (The answer: 64.) One that stumped all three of the anointed men was, "How does Plan B actually work?"
Here's another question they might have asked: What's the median net worth of a member of Congress? Answer: just over $1 million. Multiply that a hundred or so times and you'll get the net worth of who the editorial board wants to send to Congress in NY-10.
More notable stories:
- Gannett Media laid off a bunch of reporters in their 250 newspapers across the country, including the investigative editor and executive editor at lohud.com. But cheer up: Gannett's chairman and CEO made $7.7 million last year.
- The Board of Correction has released a report noting that the City's correction department has failed to "identify, protect, and properly care for transgender, gender non-conforming, nonbinary, and/or intersex (TGNCNBI) people in custody." The CITY has the full story.
- The advisor to Eric Adams who was also working for a casino company while taking a $124,000 annual police department pension has parted ways with the casino company, the Times reports.
And finally: $20 for crudites? And that doesn't even include the tequila? What is Joe Biden even DOING down there?
