Who Will New Yorkers Vote for?

New York City’s mayoral election is fast approaching. Come November, Democratic primary winner Zohran Mamdani will face Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa, along with three candidates running as independents: Mayor Eric Adams, former governor Andrew Cuomo, and attorney Jim Walden.

To get a better sense of how New Yorkers feel about the candidates, the Manhattan Institute conducted a focus group with 11 undecided voters representing a range of ages and ethnic backgrounds. We asked which issues are most important to them, their thoughts on some of the candidates’ proposals, and whom they’re leaning toward supporting.

Six of the group were completely undecided. Three leaned toward Mamdani, one toward Adams, and two toward Cuomo. The cost of living and public safety topped their concerns, and they described the city as “dysfunctional” and “anxious.”

Read more of our conversation with them here.

Kenneth T. Jackson’s landmark 1985 history, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States, showed how transportation has been the key technology shaping the physical form of American settlements. Now, 40 years after Jackson’s book debuted, a new transportation technology—autonomous vehicles—is poised to reshape our cities yet again.

“For motorists,” writes City Journal economics editor Jordan McGillis, “the core appeal of AVs is the promise of freeing up time in the car.” With the AV’s smart systems bearing the cognitive burden of safely driving to and from work, car commuters will be freed up to get more work done or enjoy more leisure time, as they choose.

That means workers will be willing to tolerate longer commutes, widening metropolitan areas. “New exurban and rural land will be brought within the redrawn commuter-shed,” writes McGillis.

Read more here.

Teachers are fleeing their jobs in droves, in part because of student misbehavior. In a feature from City Journal’s Summer issue, Neetu Arnold examines one factor contributing to rising classroom chaos: Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (PBIS), a framework that encourages administrators to adopt more lenient student-discipline policies.

PBIS has been adopted in districts around the country and is backed by a federally funded center run by the U.S. Department of Education. Arnold spoke with school officials, who described how the framework “drove disruptive classrooms, undermined their authority, and made effective teaching nearly impossible.” Read the rest of her piece here.

Charles Fain Lehman, Neetu Arnold, Rafael Mangual, and Daniel Di Martino discuss voters’ increasing dissatisfaction with the Democratic Party and potential 2028 frontrunners, why President Trump is targeting the Smithsonian’s museums, and reporting that an Eric Adams adviser gave cash to a journalist in a potato chip bag. 

Photo credit: Spencer Platt / Staff / Getty Images News via Getty Images