#10 NYC mayoral candidates’ nuttiest proposals yet

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Raise taxes on the rich, who are already heading for the exits! 

Ban cars in Manhattan! 

Put up the homeless in office buildings! 

A dozen-odd candidates have tossed their hats in the ring to be New York City’s next mayor. Most are so far-left, so out of touch with the Big Apple’s actual needs, they make the current mayor seem as centrist as a 1960s “Rockefeller Republican.” 

To judge them by their words, even the least loony in the field is enough to send the most passionate New Yorker to the exits. Their statements on such key issues as policing, homelessness, taxation and quality of life range from merely silly to borderline insane. 

They’ve all got their eyes on the June 22 Democratic primary — decisive in a city where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by more than six to one. It’s no wonder that most candidates lean liberal-and-beyond on almost every major issue. 

Their words matter. Here are some of the candidates’ nuttier pronouncements. They’re all direct quotes from their websites, interviews and one campaign video. 

Read them and tremble for our future.

SCOTT STRINGER, New York City comptroller

“We will ask the most fortunate to pay a bit more in taxes,” he said at a campaign announcement in upper Manhattan. “There will be some that leave … [but] why would you risk your life going to Texas or Florida or anyplace where you have governors who just ignore health and safety laws? You’ve got to be nuts to go there.” 

WHY IT’S DUMB Stringer’s in charge of the city’s finances. He knows that finance billionaires Paul Singer and Carl Icahn are willing to “risk their lives” by moving to Florida along with their companies. Even Goldman Sachs is weighing a partial move to Fort Lauderdale. 

Bloomberg reported that “the top 1 percent of New Yorkers … paid $4.9 billion in local income taxes [in 2018], making up 42.5 percent of total income tax collected by the city,” according to the Independent Budget Office. 

So, sure — let’s drive them all away and leave it to the poor to fill the city’s $9 billion budget deficit.

SHAUN DONOVAN, former US Housing Secretary; former NYC commissioner of Dept of Housing Preservation and Development 

“We must have a city where the same benefits [which the “wealthy” enjoy] “are available to all … we will prove this is possible by [creating] 15-minute neighborhoods. Within 15 minutes of your front door, every New Yorker should have a great public school, fresh food, access to rapid transportation, a park,” he said in a recent speech. 

WHY IT’S DUMB Although aimed at the disadvantaged, this pipe dream is more reflective of the bellyaching of white Upper West Siders when a nearby burger joint closes. And just how would you install a school or transit “access” within everyone’s 15-block radius short of rebuilding the entire city?

ERIC ADAMS, Brooklyn Borough President

“Go back to Iowa, you go back to Ohio. New York City belongs to the people that were here and made New York City what it is,” Adams said at an anti-gentrification rally in Harlem rally last January. 

WHY IT’S DUMB Not many people move here from Iowa or Ohio. But blacks comprise just 8.4 percent and 14.3 percent, respectively, of those states’ populations. As The Post reported, Adams played the race card in using those states as code for white gentrifiers. Adams isn’t anti-white, but he shamefully borrowed from Al Sharpton’s notorious “white interlopers” rhetoric of the 1980s to fire up a Harlem crowd.

DIANNE MORALES, former CEO of several social service nonprofits 

“I was the first candidate for mayor to call to defund the police … we will divest from policing and reinvest in communities towards community-based resources like youth support programs and childcare, safe community spaces and parks, transportation and other public infrastructure … our money is being directed towards the needs of the people rather than a system that enforces racism and violence,” she stated on her website. 

WHY IT’S DUMB Her feel-good strategy wouldn’t have helped Gloria Flores, 70, a Brooklyn bus rider who was hit by a stray bullet meant for a gang member. In fact, many black leaders who represent crime-ridden neighborhoods deplore the idea of police defunding. Bronx City Council member Vanessa Gibson said her constituents “want to see cops in the community.” Brooklyn Council member Laurie Cumbo termed defunding a form of “colonization” pushed by white progressives. 

RAY McGUIRE, former Citigroup vice-chairman and global head of corporate and investment banking

“I am not for defund. I am for restructuring the police … We need better policing, not fewer police.” (So far, so good!) 

But then, he continued, in a Channel 11 interview on Dec. 7: “We need to get police partners with mental health officials. We need to get police partnered with community organizations that have been so effective at managing what’s taking place.” 

WHY IT’S DUMB What community groups are “managing” anything well? Surely they can’t tame the gun violence that’s ravaged mostly minority neighborhoods. As for “mental health officials,” does McGuire mean ThriveNYC’s Chirlane McCray, whose agency has burned through $850 million in public money while doing nothing for those suffering from mental illness?

MAYA WILEY, former counsel to Mayor de Blasio

“We must reimagine through big ideas like high schools without walls, that would untether students from particular assignments to specific buildings to open up new opportunities for learning,” she states on her website. “We must consider how kids can virtually join classrooms for courses that they are interested in.” 

WHY IT’S DUMB Remote learning since schools “reopened” has universally been called a disaster for pupils and their families. 

KATHRYN GARCIA, former NYC Sanitation chief

“For the past 14 years, I’ve gotten up at 5 a.m. to make sure that by the time most New Yorkers wake up, their trash has been collected and they have clean water in their tap,” she declared on her campaign website. 

WHY IT’S DUMB This might be the worst-timed campaign boast in history. Big Apple streets have never been filthier with walls of uncollected trash. It’s partly due to Mayor de Blasio cutting $106 million from the department’s budget but it was little better before that. Worse, Garcia hardly protested the cuts: “These were just really difficult choices,” Garcia said last July.

LOREE K. SUTTON, retired Army brigadier general and Mayor de Blasio’s first Veterans Services commissioner

“We can respect the dignity of all seriously mentally ill New Yorkers and their families through ensuring timely access to clubhouse communities, clinical treatment, caregiver respite, residential programs and, when needed, hospitalization,” she states on her website. “We can reach and provide care for those who are depressed and despondent, whose suffering may drive them to addiction and deaths of despair, whether by intention or accident.” 

WHY IT’S DUMB New Yorkers don’t want “clubhouse communities,” whatever that means. They want to be safe from bipolar, screaming street defecators and subway pushers. But to Sutton, it’s more important to “contain, mitigate and prevent” the crisis that every New Yorker surely fears most — “the increasingly disruptive threats caused by climate disruption.” 

JOYCELYN TAYLOR, a self-described “working-class Democrat” and founder of TaylorMade Contracting, a home-improvement firm 

“There are a lot of companies that are right now going to have employees that are going to be working from home. There’s a lot of office space that’s going to be available,” she said. “Let’s take the Daily News for example, they mentioned that none of their employees are going back. 

“We can do quick conversion of some of these office spaces to provide more stability and permanency for them in this moment.” 

WHY IT’S DUMB People won’t be working from home forever. And as a business owner, Taylor might have heard that office buildings are private property. The city can’t just take them over to house the homeless. That is, not unless it pays the landlord a lot of money as it’s done with hotels. And we’ve seen how well that’s worked out.

CARLOS MENCHACA, City Council member who killed a worthy, small-scale rezoning in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park neighborhood

“When I think about the future of a city like New York, I think about car-less boroughs. Boroughs, I’ll say it! Imagine if Manhattan was completely car-less. And how do you get there? It’s by inching towards that, it’s through conversation and experimentation,” he said in a May 2018 interview with Transportation Alternatives. 

WHY IT’S DUMB He travels only by bike and is neglecting to think about the millions of New Yorkers who aren’t as young and fit and need four wheels rather than two to get to their jobs.