With the election entering its final stretch, City Hall sat down with the two men running the two big mayoral campaigns. They agreed on their plans for the day after Election Day, but other than that painted starkly different versions of the stakes of this race, their own internal operations and their view of each other from afar. Eddy Castell’s proposed title for a book about the campaign? Shock The World. Bradley Tusk’s? It’s Not Rocket Science. —Edward-Isaac Dovere
Eddy Castell
What is the one thing people should know about the other candidate before they decide to vote for your guy?
Eight is enough.
Describe the experience of managing your campaign in one word.
Exciting.
What has been the biggest surprise in your campaign operation over the last few months?
That term limits—while we knew it would be an issue—I’m surprised at the depth of the resentment that the public’s having on term limits.
What has been the biggest surprise decision or move by the other side?
Certainly for them to roll out Rudy Giuliani and for the mayor to echo what were basically fear-mongering comments with racial undertones was surprising. I didn’t think the mayor would stoop that low. On that issue, you thought he would be better than Giuliani… It was one of the things he said, that eight years of Rudy, there were some positives. There were also negatives, and the polarization of the city was one of those. Michael Bloomberg had said that he wanted to make sure that wasn’t the case. And he’s tried to—and I always took him at his word—he’s tried to rule that way. And now, when things get tough, when things are starting to get close, when he gets his ass beaten in the debate, you see that he’s no better than Rudy Giuliani. You see that he’s willing to try fear-mongering and divisiveness and polarization, if it means his re-election.
When the book of this campaign is written, what will go down as your smartest single move?
Without a doubt, not being scared off by the fact that he had all this money, not being scared off by the fact that everyone before the race started said it was going to be over. And the smartest move for Bill Thompson was to believe that this city and the voters of this city were sophisticated enough when it was time for change.
What will go down as your biggest blunder in that book?
That one hasn’t been written yet.
What will the title of that book be?
What’s that line from Muhammad Ali when he beat Sonny Liston? Shock The World. The other thing it could just be is Yes We Did Again.
Is there anyone from the other campaign that you would want to hire to work for you in the future?
Not at this point.
What piece of advice would you give your counterpart in the last few days for managing the other campaign?
At this point, I’d tell Bradley Tusk to stay the course that they’re going on, because I think it works to my advantage. Keep doing what you’re doing.
What would be the best thing about your candidate winning?
I think the opportunity over the next four years for him to be able to demonstrate that you can manage this city through tough times and still protect the middle class.
What would be the worst thing about the other candidate winning?
I think a third term would be horrible. I think you’re going to have a not only out-of-touch mayor, but a disinterested mayor, and third terms are historically, notoriously not great. I think in this case it would be particularly bad because you have someone who’s sticking around just because they don’t want to get off the stage.
What is your plan for the day after Election Day?
Sleep and reintroduce myself to my wife and kids.
Bradley Tusk
What is the one thing people should know before they decide to vote for your guy?
He’s a good mayor.
Describe the experience of managing your campaign in one word.
Complex.
What has been the biggest surprise in your campaign operation over the last few months?
How few surprises there have been.
What has been the biggest surprise decision or move by the other side?
The most out-of-the-box endorsement they got to me was the firefighters. Everyone else was purely based on partisan loyalty, people who endorsed Thompson because they had to. The firefighters’ [endorsement] was a little bit outside of that, a little different.
When the book of this campaign is written, what will go down as your smartest single move?
I put together a great team.
What will go down as your biggest blunder in that book?
There’s two weeks to go, so I’m not going to put a jinx on it.
What will the title of that book be?
It’s Not Rocket Science. This is my fundamental view, which is probably bad marketing on my part: we have a really cool campaign—every great kind of resource you could imagine, all the smart people you could possibly assemble, we do all kinds of great, crazy stuff, we’ve got ads up in eight different languages… With all of that said, if your candidate’s the incumbent and has done a good job managing the city, running the schools, keeping it safe, keeping it clean, people are going to think he’s a good mayor and re-elect him. Fundamentally, if you are bad at all of those things, it would be very hard to re-elect him, and all the cool stuff that we do may help us turn out our vote, may help us identify our voters, it may help push our message a little bit. But at the end of the day, it’s really based on his performance as mayor and not our campaign. It’s really not rocket science at all.
Is there anyone from the other campaign that you would want to hire to work for you in the future?
We really have remarkably little interaction with them. But every interaction I’ve ever had with Eddy has been really positive. He seems like a really smart guy.
What piece of advice would you give your counterpart in the last few days for managing the other campaign?
Eddy has done very well in his career to date. He doesn’t need my advice.
What would be the best thing about your candidate winning?
The city would continue to be a really good place. He makes New York City a better place not just for the next four years, but—I’ve been saying this a lot lately in my speeches—he’s one of those rare elected officials who looks 10, 20, 30 years out and tries to make decisions for the long term, and that’s incredibly rare in an elected official, and I think New York City, now more than ever, would really benefit
What would be the worst thing about the other candidate winning?
I think that we’ve made tremendous progress in schools in the last eight years. I think that his tenure at the Board of Education was not successful. I think that, after all the gains have been made, to return to someone who was not successful the first time around would be a mistake.
What is your plan for the day after Election Day?
Take my kids to school, go to the gym, try to sleep more than four hours that night, and come to the office and try to figure out how to help everyone here transition to their next thing.
