Sliwa shouldn’t have been debating and the moderators interrupted too much

In last week’s town hall debate between Zohran Mamdani, Andrew Cuomo and Curtis Sliwa, the big loser was the voting public, with too many interruptions from moderators and too little time for responses and not enough time for follow-up or idea development.

There will be another chance on Wednesday evening, we hope it will be better.

One problem was that Sliwa was there. Even though the moderators rightly tried to ignore him, to the point where he complained, it was the right approach because he should not have been on the NBC TV stage. The reason is simple: Sliwa is not going to win. According to polls, he gets less than half of what he won four years ago, when he was eliminated by a margin of more than 2-1. Is he aiming to become the Harold Stassen of New York?

Yes, Sliwa is on the ballot, but so are a bunch of fringe candidates who won’t win either. Either Mamdani or Cuomo will be elected the next mayor in two weeks. The debates should be limited to these two contenders and exclude distractions, like Sliwa.

Another problem was that, at times, it seemed like the four panel questionnaires were more interested in their own agenda than what the candidates had to say, resulting in a two-hour sequence of sound bites and attack lines. Every time a conversation threatened to get interesting, one of the moderators would interject, “We need to move on.”

Time and time again, one potential mayor or another was cut short or told to hurry up or given a ridiculously short amount of time to talk about something. It wasn’t as bad as “discuss your plans for the city’s economy: you have 15 seconds”, but that was the gist.

In fact, we don’t need to move forward. Let the candidates talk and interact with each other. It’s called a debate. It is not necessary to cover all topics. And silly questions like breakfast orders at a bodega or whether to attend Game 7 of the Mets World Series or Game 7 of the Knicks NBA Finals that happen impossibly at the same time are a waste of valuable moments that moderators are trying to force contestants to adhere to.

Presidential debates with a single moderator worked best, allowing candidates to lay out their ideas, plan and defend their positions against the rival, with the moderator only a gentle guide. If a candidate claims to be a filibustering senator, maybe interrupt them, but otherwise let them debate. Mamdani and Cuomo have many differences, let’s hear them.

Although it was treated as just a throwaway question, this question near the end could have been enlightening: “You all said you want to be mayor of all New Yorkers, so will you march in all the parades that mayors have traditionally marched in, or are there any that you would boycott?”

Both Cuomo and Sliwa said they would attend all major parades like all mayors, but Mamdani said, “There are many parades that I would not attend because I would be focused on the job of running this city.” Yes, but would a Mayor Mamdani participate in a protest or boycott the Israel Day parade on Fifth Avenue, which takes place every May, the city’s main Jewish parade?