Republican mayoral candidates Joe Lhota, John Catsimatidis, and George McDonald struggled to find topics they disagree on during Wednesday night’s debate on CBS, but they did highlight where they differ from their Democratic counterparts. All three candidates support stop-and-frisk, and weren’t fazed by the idea of their child getting frisked. McDonald said his son wouldn’t be stopped “and that’s the whole point,” explaining the focus should be on the causes of crime in neighborhoods with the most stops. Lhota said he’d tell his daughter about the legal basis for the policy, and in lieu of a comforting law lecture, Catsimatidis would “have a father-to-son talk with him and say to him that we need it.” He added, “I would say to him, ‘Well, what did you do to provoke it?’ I would say to him, ‘Were you dressed funny? Were you walking funny? Did you look funny?’”
While the candidates escaped being asked to sing, the debate did have the requisite out of left field question: Do the Republican candidates, like Christine Quinn, back improvements to the “NYC”-brand condom program? Lhota managed to twist his answer into a swipe at Quinn, accusing her of “the worst type of pandering I’ve possibly seen.” Politicker reports that Catsimatidis was clearly caught off guard, stammering “well, uh, I, I think, um, uh,” before declaring that he disagrees with Quinn on “distributing condoms to underage kids without their parents’ permission … I think it’s wrong.”
When pressed to answer the question, Catsimatidis declared, “I think we should buy the strongest condoms that we can get.” The crowd laughed, but it’s probably an issue closer to New Yorkers’ hearts (or some other appendage) than finally building that monorail.
