Christine Quinn served as the speaker of New York’s City Council for almost eight years — the first woman to do so — and was the heavy favorite to win the 2013 Democratic mayoral primary before her candidacy fell apart and Bill de Blasio emerged victorious. Since 2016, Quinn has led Win NYC, which provides housing and services to homeless women and children. But she is still outspoken about politics; she frequently opines on cable news, and recently called on Mayor Eric Adams to resign over his apparent quid pro quo with the Trump administration. I spoke with Quinn to get her perspective on a turbulent moment for New York City, between the mayoral mess and President Trump’s threat to rule over the city that spurned him. We discussed Governor Hochul’s dilemma, why Quinn isn’t thrilled about a possible comeback for Andrew Cuomo, and whether she might make another run at Gracie Mansion herself.
Governor Hochul announced last week that she would not be removing Mayor Adams and will instead urge the city and state to pass legislation that might restrain him. What did you make of the way she handled this situation?
Given how hard a decision it was, and given how unprecedented removing a city mayor of the largest city in the state would be, I understand why she went for this compromise. There are obviously people who are dissatisfied — there were people blocking the entrance to the governor’s office — and I understand that frustration, because there’s real fear that Mayor Adams is turning the government over to Donald Trump. But he is the sitting mayor, so I do understand why she came up with a compromise. And I think it’s critical that if the legislation does not get passed at the city and state level, and if the mayor’s office in some way is recalcitrant and not abiding by what the new guardrails are, she would have to revisit it swiftly.
Between this and a judge’s recent ruling that extends the criminal case against him, it seems like the spotlight is so bright on Eric Adams right now that anything he does is going to be heavily scrutinized.
Look, he’s made his own bed and he has to lie in it. And that bed — this is a ridiculous metaphor — but that bed includes a microscope on every single breath he takes.
Clearly, much of the city government has already lost their faith in him.
He lost four top deputy mayors in one day. And I’ve heard one name bandied about, but I don’t think we have any replacements. If we start to lose commissioners, we’re really in trouble.
What effect would that have, if, say, commissioners quit en masse?
It would be destabilizing. For the Department of Homeless Services, if we lost the commissioner, Molly Park — we don’t always agree, but I hold her in the highest regard, and she really runs that place. We all may think New York City just kind of runs on inertia, and maybe there are departments where that’s the case, but most of these departments are actually run by the commissioners. Now, you can put the first deputies in, but you can’t have every major city agency being run by a first deputy.
What worries you most about the situation where Adams is still in charge for the next few months with this obvious quid pro quo dangling over him?
At Win, we’ve housed about 1,100 or 1,200 migrants, and there are people who literally in some cases walked to the United States. And they’re fleeing violence and sex trafficking and poverty at a level we can’t even understand. They were sent to New York, incredibly unceremoniously, by the governor of Texas. And now if the mayor does a quid pro quo, as has been reported, he’s going to change our entire historical existence as a sanctuary city. He’s going to take these folks who risk their lives for freedom, put them in a jail and send them back to unlivable conditions where they will be treated worse than they were before, because they fled.
I remember when I was health committee chair from 2002 to 2006, then-President Bush threatened to cut off funding to public hospitals unless we allowed ICE into the public hospitals. And I remember standing with Mike Bloomberg and Joe Crowley at Elmhurst Hospital, saying the Feds could do whatever they wanted, but we were not turning emergency rooms into ICE offices. If he opens the doors to ICE, we will see sick people not get care, we will see domestic violence victims not call the police, we will see people hiding in the shadows, fleeing shelters to live God knows where. It will become the most un-New York thing that any mayor has ever done. And when I stood there with Mike Bloomberg and Congressmember Crowley and other elected officials and other mayors across the country, the federal government backed down.
It is harder to imagine the Trump administration backing down. Bush seems quaint now.
Right, I know — the good old days. I don’t disagree with that, except he backed down about federal funding. Fairly quickly.
True. He just seems to have a certain special animus for New York City, and of course immigrants.
That is absolutely true. But Eric was a police captain. He must have responded to calls from undocumented people, and he must have known the terror that was in their eyes thinking that they had to call the police, but what was going to happen when they called the police? And then to do this, to take the long immigrant history of our city — every time we’ve had a wave of immigrants, the city has benefited — and turn it into just a police state as it relates to migrants and immigrants is just terrible.
What do you think the city council should be doing right now? What would you be doing?
I think the council has done a good job of standing up to the mayor. The response from the speaker when the at-best-confusing guidance came out of the Department of Homeless Services about whether security guards were to let ICE in if they felt threatened — their quick response and their quick threat of a lawsuit, I think, made a big difference in getting the guidance improved. I think it’s a huge thing that the speaker came out and said that the mayor should resign. That really took a lot of guts. There are three pieces of legislation pending in the council that would make sanctuary city provisions even tighter in the city, and I think it would be good to pass them. You could say, what does it matter because if Adams has sold his soul to Donald Trump, it doesn’t matter what the law is. But I think it makes a point. When the legislature goes as far as it can, it makes a point.
Andrew Cuomo, Hochul’s former boss, is leading every Democratic primary poll. Even though he hasn’t officially joined the race, there’s a pretty good chance he’ll be the next mayor. What do you make of his possible return?
I think it’s unfortunate. He left Albany in disgrace. He left Albany with a long line of women having accused him of sexual harassment, horrible sexual harassment. That’s not what we need in the mayor’s office. Right now we need somebody who’s going to bring honor back to the mayor’s office. And look,I believe in forgiveness, I believe in redemption. But has Andrew Cuomo spent the three years since leaving office engaging in requests for forgiveness, engaging in acts of redemption to try to make up for what he did? Not that I’ve seen.
I think it’s more about lying low and hoping people forget.
I don’t know how that works at the pearly gates, but I guess he’ll find out.
If he does win, would Hochul and Cuomo make de Blasio and Cuomo’s dynamic look friendly?
If you wrote this in a movie script, they would say, “That’s unbelievable, don’t put it in there. That could never happen.”
That’s kind of like all our politics right now, isn’t it? It all feels surreal.
That is true. But you know, Kathy Hochul is a very responsible elected official. You saw de Blasio take a huge attack posture — Kathy would never do something like that. So I think she would strive, whoever the mayor is, whether it’s the former governor or not, she’ll strive to work well with them, I don’t think you would ever see something like that.
It’s not two men, in other words.
Well, yes. To sum it up, you’d have a woman in the room and things would have to be productive and focused. There would be no measuring.
Cuomo would probably have been in an even better position if Hochul had removed Adams, setting up a special election he’d be favored to win. Could Hochul be trying to kneecap him by not letting that happen?
I think that’s the level of plotting that reporters always think elected officials are engaged in. And as a former one: We’re usually not that clever.
Not that Machiavellian?
Not that Machiavellian, not that clever, and just trying to get out of whatever situation we are unfortunately in.
Politico reported last year that you were mulling a mayoral run if Adams weren’t in the race, which obviously is a possibility now. What’s your current thinking on that?
I loved being an elected official, and obviously I had wanted to be mayor, but that didn’t quite work out. I’ve always said if there was the right opportunity, I would love to try to serve again. It was the greatest honor and just such a great way to make the city a better place, and I certainly see, in the position I’m in now, the difference who’s in what office makes.
But this could be the perfect moment, right? It’s very unsettled.
Unsettled is quite the word for it.
Do you think you might endorse in this mayoral race if you don’t jump in yourself?
I didn’t in the last one. It’s a tough position when you run a not-for-profit — I tortured my own mind about it last time. So I honestly don’t know. It’s tough being the head of a big not-for-profit group, but then for somebody who’s also vice chair of the Democratic Party and so involved in politics, it feels a little weird not doing it. So I don’t know
I’m curious about your general take on Trump 2.0. He announced his intent to kill congestion pricing last week, and tweeted out a photo of himself looming over the city as a king. Even if Adams weren’t compromised, what could he be doing to combat this? And what could the city council be doing?
At Win, we put out a document called Project Hope 2025. It’s a response to Project 2025, and it lays out the steps that the city and the state could take to blunt the impact of Project 2025 on low income people, homeless people, young children, etc.
Is having a president out to get you a bad thing? Without question. But we are not without agency, we are not without the ability to take steps that can prevent the worst from happening, and we’re really pushing to try to get those things done by the city and state. The tax credit the governor proposed in her State of the State was actually one of our suggestions, and we think that’s a good step forward. Last week, the Senate and the Assembly had a hearing on a state housing voucher, which is critical, but even more critical if Section Eight vouchers are cut. Also, the city should make housing vouchers available to undocumented people, and then we would have places and an ability to move migrants and undocumented people out of shelter more quickly.
What do you think of the job Hochul’s doing overall? She’s been positioning herself more as an anti-Trump force recently.
I would never underestimate Kathy Hochul. A lot of people in her career have underestimated her, and they have paid a price for it. I think people thought perhaps that Donald Trump was going to kind of roll her, and that is not happening.
It seems like she had a bit of a learning curve on the job, prior to this moment.
Who doesn’t? I mean, most times when you get elected governor, you have a transition. You have either the primary ‘til January or November to January. She had like 36 hours. So to not have a learning curve would’ve been just an unrealistic expectation. But she’s stood up every time we’ve needed her on issues to the LGBTQ+ community, on issues of abortion rights — that horrible arrest request of one of the upstate abortion doctors. I mean, she could not have been more firm.
Anything else you want to add about all the political craziness in New York right now?
God help us.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
