#McGuire’s setting right agenda for NYC’s 2021 mayoral race

Former Citigroup chief Ray McGuire officially entered the 2021 mayoral race Wednesday — offering independence and good sense that the main candidates sorely lack.

He’s running because, he says, “every New Yorker deserves a chance to get back in the game, and all of New York deserves a mayor who can bring this city together and solve this crisis.”

He certainly has the leadership chops on that latter point, unlike others seeking the job (not to mention the incumbent): He ran one of the largest and most complex companies in the world.

That also gives him a private-sector perspective absent from most of his rivals (unless you want to count Scott Stringer’s failed bar). Indeed, McGuire’s connection to economic reality would be a huge plus for a city badly battered by the pandemic — and facing a major challenge to avoid the permanent loss of office jobs.

In McGuire’s announcement video, producer Spike Lee says New Yorkers are faced with “the opportunity to rebuild” and “need a mayor who can bring us together.”

Lee also vouches for McGuire as a fighter for racial justice, saying: “He lives that fight every single day.”

Raised by a single mother in Dayton, Ohio, McGuire won a full academic scholarship to the elite Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, Conn., then moved on to Harvard, where he also earned postgraduate degrees in both law and business.

His campaign will be guided by Basil Smikle, a veteran political operative, cable TV pundit and one-time executive director of the Democratic State Committee.

McGuire’s background as one of the nation’s No. 1 executives — and perhaps the top black business leader in America — and centrist politics may be what are needed to counter a local political culture dominated by special interests and hacks. At the very least, he’s right about what the city needs now: “Politics as usual just won’t cut it.”