And how’s that status quo working out given that we are on a thread about…more blatant corruption from the Adams administration? The De Blasio—Adams years have been a disaster.

I care a lot more about whether someone votes than whether they would be a competent administrator and effective leader. I think there’s a valid argument against Yang as a CEO and campaign leader, where he gave multiple competing executive titles to different people ( MLK III, Neha Sasha Ahuja, some other political consultant whose name I forgot). But the voting argument appealed only to a small amount of activists who were distraught that their political machine could be disrupted by someone who launched his political career from a podcast. Ross Barkan explained Yang’s threat clearly:

“First, let’s pause for a moment and reflect on what it would mean if, indeed, Yang wins the June 22nd Democratic primary and coasts in the general election against nominal Republican opposition. He will have demonstrated the hollowness of most political institutions in the five boroughs. An entrepreneur who got famous running for president and hardly bothered to vote in New York at all, Yang was able to capture, in a matter of months, constituencies that ladder-climbing political lifers could not, despite their many attempts. It only took four months or so for Yang to completely lock up the Hasidic vote in Borough Park, Brooklyn, for example, despite the fact that Adams and Stringer have been pandering to this community for years, and Stringer once cheered on rocket attacks on Gaza. That work, clearly, was for naught. Yang gave ground on all their issues to a distressing degree, particularly on BDS and Palestine, but most Democrats have been doing that for a while. The Hasidic leaders are a pragmatic bunch and they clearly see the writing on the wall. This Yang guy, who they had barely heard of before January, might be going places.”

And yes, the xenophobia against Asian-American candidates from the white establishment is real. Look at how NPR received Wu’s win in the much better run Boston: https://www.npr.org/2021/11/16/1055972179/boston-first-black-mayor