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April 255h Len’s Political Note #722 Adrienne Adams Mayor New York City
2025 Democratic Primary
This is not so simple. New York City is Democratic enough so that it is highly probable that the winner of the Democratic primary will become mayor. New York City’s election is in November of 2025. Its primary is on June 24, 2025. If I convince you, you will send money to the five candidates I recommend. Why five? New York City uses a ranked choice system of voting and invites voters to rank their top five choices.
When the votes are counted, the votes of the candidate with the fewest are redistributed to their second choice and so on. Eventually, the votes of the fifth place candidate are similarly redistributed among the top four. And so on, until a candidate has a majority of the vote.
The New York Times reported a few days ago that Congresswoman Nydia Valazquez and six other Democrats – Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, State Senator Julia Salazar, Assembly Member Emily Gallagher, and City Council Members Jennifer Gutierrez, Sandy Nurse, and Lincoln Restler – had endorsed three candidates for mayor. The three endorsed candidates are City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, City Comptroller Brad Lander, and State Assembly Member Zohran Mamdami. The Working Families Party did Nydia Valazquez one better by endorsing those three plus State Senator Zellnore Myrie.
Both groups are, I think, right in their inclination, but wrong in their execution. In endorsing a multiple of candidates, each group is attempting to stop front running former governor, Andrew Cuomo. In a recent poll, Cuomo led the pack with 34% of the vote. Some attribute his lead to mere name recognition, but in politics having a name that people recognize is not nothing.
Maya Gay, a member of the New York Times editorial board, wrote that, despite Andrew Cuomo’s capacity to slash through bureaucracy to build stuff (the revitalized LaGuardia airport, for instance} and despite his calming and effective televised Covid reports, he should not be mayor.
She described Cuomo as having governed through “fear, infighting and petty cruelty.” The harassment of women which led to his resignation as governor was one version of his abusive governing style. It is not that, other than his treatment of people he governed without errors. His prohibiting nursing homes from rejecting new patients was a substantial contribution to the number of Covid deaths among the elderly in New York. In addition, she tells us that even though Andrew Cuomo had campaigned promising to end Albany’s culture of corruption, his “his closest aide, Joseph Percoco, was convicted on federal bribery charges” (though one of the charges of which he was convicted was overturned by the US Supreme Court as the Court continues to whittle away at the meaning of criminal corruption).
Maya Gay adds another reason for not electing Andrew Cuomo as mayor of New York City. She says Cuomo dislikes New York City. His tenure as governor was marked by furious quarrels with New York City’s mayor Bill DeBlasio. When federal funds were made available to assist New York transit, Governor Andrew Cuomo chose to spend on suburban train stations rather than New York City’s subway. Andrew Cuomo lives/d in the suburbs, not the city. I will add that even Andrew Cuomo is living in a friend’s New York City apartment which he will certainly leave if he is not selected as the Democratic candidate for mayor.
If Andrew Cuomo is to be stopped, endorsing three or four candidates as described above will not do the job. Someone following that advice, to whom the name of Andrew Cuomo is familiar, who may think that marking Andrew Cuomo as the third or fourth or fifth choice is opposing him, is mistaken. Those third, fourth, and fifth choices can move a candidate to a win. To prevent Andrew Cuomo from becoming mayor, people need to leave him off the ballot while they select five alternatives.
Here are my recommendations for the five alternatives.
Adrienne Adams. My #1 rank.
Currently Speaker of the City Council, she grew up in Queens. Her dad drove a truck for UPS. Her mom was a cook at the Rikers Island prison. Adrienne Adams was a good student at her Catholic Elementary School, Bayside High School, and Spelman College where she got her BA. Asked if she knew the other Bayside student who is now the mayor, Eric Adams, she said “I actually went to class. We knew of each other but we did not hang out in the same crowd.”
Adrienne Adams had no intention of becoming a politician. She worked as a trainer in the corporate world. With her husband, John J. Adams, she raised a blended family of four children. Now she is the grandmother of eleven. As her children moved out of the house, she became involved in community activities. She became a member, then Chair of Community Board #12. Appointed by the Borough President, half of them nominated by City Councilors, these unpaid Board Members address what concerns their community faces and especially land use issues in their section of the city. The average population that a Community Board focuses on is in the range of 150,000 people.
Adrienne Adams ran for a City Council seat after the City Councilor was convicted of fraud and removed from office (Later his conviction was reversed). With a different view about minorities in government from our current President, she co-chaired the Black, Latino, and Asian Caucus and led an effort to set aside a $10 million budget to create a Black Studies curriculum in City high schools. Furthermore, she supported legislation to allow legal residents to vote in municipal elections. Aware, in part through her mother, she opposed solitary confinement at Rikers as a “form of torture.”
Not initially a candidate for Council Speaker, she was a perfect compromise candidate. Bright and articulate, though not charismatic, she understands city issues and institutions. When she was elected the City Council was divided with the Mayor touting a candidate. Adrienne Adams brought the City Council together, winning with a 49 to 2 vote. The two who were opposed were cutting about her and wrong: We need a leader who is bold and independent. “We need more than symbolic representation.” Adrienne Adams, as Speaker, was bold, independent and certainly not a mere symbol.
As Speaker, Adrienne Adams was tough enough to refuse to take up a proposal from the Mayor to switch to Medicare Advantage for city retirees. She helped create and pass a modification of the Mayor’s proposal to create an additional 80,000 housing units. After four Deputy Mayors resigned in the wake of corruption charges, she called for Mayor Adams to resign as well. All through the process, she kept the City Council together.
Almost 65 years old, Adrienne Adams anticipated retirement, but was pressed into running for mayor by city leaders who saw her as capable of defeating Andrew Cuomo and Eric Adams (Adams is now running as an independent rather than in the Democratic Primary). The principal disadvantage of her late start was her inability to meet the first deadline for city campaign matching funds. Because she missed the first deadline for public funds, a month ago, she had less than $300,000 available for campaigning. She has a particular need for you to DONATE. Donate a lot. If you are in New York City, join her campaign. She is a remarkably competent politician, committed to social justice and preserving order and institutions at the same time. She views her political world distinctively. She describes Donald Trump and Andrew Cuomo as a couple of little boys from Queens.
Brad Lander. My #2 rank.
The political club I belong to, the Four Freedoms Democratic Club, endorsed Brad Lander for mayor. There are good reasons for that endorsement.
Brad Lander is 55 years old. He came here from the St. Louis suburbs, though not exactly directly. He went to The University of Chicago as an undergraduate and left for London with a Truman Scholarship and a Marshall scholarship in hand. He earned an MA from University College, London and then came to New York where he got a Master’s Degree in Urban Planning from Pratt.
As he did everywhere, he impressed and was remembered. Living in Park Slope, the executive director of the (Brooklyn) Fifth Avenue Committee, he tackled what may be the City’s core issue – the lack of affordable housing. After ten years, he returned to Pratt as Executive Director of their Center for Urban Development. He continued his focus on housing, added a focus on economic development, and decided that the way he could truly affect the direction of New York City was to run for political office.
In 2009, Brad Lander was elected to the City Council. He was, sometimes, contentious. In 2015, he was arrested while supporting striking car washers. In 2016, he expressed disdain for a Chinese American opponent of Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez and, as a result, was himself the recipient of anger from the Chinese American community. Later in 2016, he announced that he planned to get arrested during the National Day of Action in favor of a $15 minimum wage. In 2017, he was arrested in the Capitol Building in Washington DC while protesting against what we now know as the Trump Tax Cuts. In 2018, as part of a successful campaign to oust Republican State Senator Marty Golden, he was arrested for blocking traffic among other offenses.
None of this contention prevented Brad Lander from being an effective City Councilor. In 2013, he was a leader in the effort to override a Mayor Bloomberg veto and pass a sick leave provision for city workers. In 2015, he led an effort to prohibit racially and ethnically discriminatory credit checks. By 2017, he may have become the most effective progressive figure on the Council, leading efforts that ranged from providing air conditioners to schools to tenant protection to issues of public safety. In 2019, he went to work on housing the homeless in New York. His proposals earned the opposition, even enmity of Mayor de Blasio as being expensive and insufficiently responsive to the varied needs of the homeless. By 2020, everyone in the City and the country had become preoccupied with the pandemic. Brad Lander sought to move people out of jails to avoid making the jails centers of disease.
While not strictly a Council issue, New York City has a foreign policy. Among the most difficult issues for American Jewish progressives, even before the October 7 Hamas attack, is finding a way to maintain support for Israel and acknowledge legitimate aspirations of Palestinians. Brad Lander’s way out of responding to the dilemma, was to take his own trip to the West Bank and to report back about the impossible conditions that West Bank Palestinians were living under.
Termed out, Brad Lander ran for Comptroller in 2021. He has had a remarkably uncontroversial tenure in that role. He would count the end of 42-1a tax exemptions a success. He and other progressives saw this tax incentive as being far more helpful to developers than to those with a need for affordable housing who the incentive was intended to help. Like Adrienne Adams, he was a key figure in preventing Mayor Eric Adams from moving retired NYC workers from conventional Medicare to a Medicare Advantage program.
Brad Lander became sufficiently at odds with the indicted Mayor Adams that he not only decided on a run for mayor, but he also sought a meeting of the officials who, according to law, could call on the City Council to remove the mayor from office.
I will urge you to DONATE to Brad Lander and to the other three candidates I recommend. One further advantage for Lander is that a month ago, with access to both public and private funds, he had $4.5 million available for his campaign. He can compete financially with Andrew Cuomo.
Zellnor Myrie. My Number #3 Rank
The son of Costa Rican immigrants, 37 year old Zellnor Myrie is a graduate of Brooklyn Tech High School (one of the mandated by law New York City exam high schools), Fordham University, and Cornell Law School. In southern and midwestern states, serving as president of the class at a major state university can be a route to successful statewide politics as an adult. Zellnor Myrie was president of his class at Cornell Law School. That is not the same thing, though it doesn’t hurt.
After college, but before law school, Zellnor Myrie worked at the City Council. After law school, he worked for a year at one of the big law firms in New York City. Then he ran for and was elected to the Brooklyn based 20th district of the State Senate, defeating Jesse Hamilton, a member of the Independent Democratic Caucus.
The 2018 race was a big deal. New York Democrats had been hamstrung in the legislature by the Independent Democratic Caucus. Elected as Democrats, the eight or ten IDC members caucused with the Republicans and gave the Republicans control of the state Senate. With the complicity or support (depending on how you look at the matter) the group was assisted by then governor Andrew Cuomo. The Independent Democrats got nice offices, sufficient staff, and credit for Democratic oriented legislation that Republicans were willing to accept. Andrew Cuomo got protection from choosing between vetoing legislation he would have seen as too progressive and signing progressive legislation that would have made him a less acceptable presidential candidate nationally. Republicans got control of the state Senate. The rest of the Democrats got the short end of the stick
Zellnor Myrie’s primary victory against Jesse Hamilton was part of a transformation of New York politics. And Zellnor Myrie was eager to get to work on that. He supported a tenant protection law; then another one that prohibited evictions during the Covid Pandemic emergency. In opposition to a federal (first Trump term) banking rule prohibiting banks from discriminating against gun manufacturers, Zellnor Myrie advocated for a New York statute which would permit New York banks to choose not to lend to gun manufacturers.
Zellnor Myrie also authored his own gun safety bills. One declared gun violence a public health crisis and funded hospital and community organization gun safety programs. Another designated illegal gun sales as a public nuisance, potentially making the gun manufacturers liable for the consequences of those sales.
While a state senator, Zellnor Myrie participated in demonstrations. During one of the demonstrations after the George Floyd murder, he and his prospective wife, former Assembly Member Diana Richardson, were pepper sprayed and he was arrested.
Zellnore Myrie opened his mayoral campaign with a plan to build 700,000 new housing units. He has been an effective fund raiser and ended March with nearly $3 million available for his campaign. DONATE to Zellnor Myrie. If you want to donate more to higher choices, that’s OK. Remember, though, the goal is to keep Andrew Cuomo out oof the mayoral race.
At the endorsement meeting of my political club, one of the more moderate members, a man only slightly older than I am, urged the club members to vote yes on a resolution to not rank Andrew Cuomo, arguing that Cuomo has no interest in running New York City, that he is really running for governor or for president. Take that warning seriously enough to provide some support to each of the five candidates you believe should be ranked.
Scott Stringer. My #4 Rank
Sixty-five year old Scott Stringer is back for another try. Active in New York City politics, his political biography is a history of New York politicians.
Begin with his parents. His mother was flamboyant Congresswoman Bella Abzug’s cousin. His father was counsel to Mayor Abe Beam, a former Comptroller who presided over the City’s financial crisis. Scott Stringer’s step father was city clerk and Deputy Bronx Borough President.
At 16 years old, editor of the John F Kennedy High School newspaper, Scott Stringer was appointed to the local community planning board by Percy Sutton, the Manhattan Borough President, civil rights activist, legal representative for Malcolm X, and eventually successful entrepreneur.
Not long after graduating from John Jay College, at age 23, Scott Stringer went to work for State Assembly Member Jerry Nadler. While working as a staffer, he supported Mario Cuomo’s run for governor.
When Jerry Nadler was elected to Congress, where he still sits, Scott Stringer ran successfully to replace him in the Assembly. During his tenure in the Assembly, he was an advocate for progressive legislation ranging from increasing available affordable housing to requiring legislators to be present to have their vote counted. In 1999, he was arrested at a protest against the police shooting of Amadou Diallo. Two years later a Village Voice article raised questions about the ethics behind Scott Stringer’s appointments.
The news article did Scott Stringer little political harm. In 2005, he was elected Manhattan Borough President. He had reports published and led fights on issues that ranged from the quality of food available in New York City to thwarting fracking in New York state. He was easily reelected in 2009, considered a primary challenge to Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, but withdrew. He has since said President Obama asked for no challengers to the Senator.
Term limited, Scott Springer ran, in 2013 for City Comptroller and won the Democratic primary, defeating Eliot Spitzer who had resigned as governor after a sex scandal. Pointing out, in 2014, that New York City Pension Funds amounted to $160 Billion in investments in 75 corporations, Scott Stringer took steps to ensure that shareholders, including pension fund nominees, had a fair opportunity to become board members of those 75 corporations.
In 2021, Scott Springer announced a run for mayor. However well he might have done, a sexual misconduct complaint by a campaign volunteer put an end to his chance to be elected. In 2021, the Democratic primary winner and eventual mayor was Eric Adams. Indicted, “blackmailed” by the Trump administration which suspended but did not close prosecution, Adams case was dismissed with prejudice (meaning it could not be brought to life again), not because the prosecution thought they could not put a case together but because an outside counsel said, in effect, the “blackmail” was unethical conduct. Nearly a dozen members of the US Attorney’s office and Trump’s Justice Department had resigned to protest the Justice Department’s actions.
Can Scott Stringer come back in 2025? He remains a progressive politician, though a somewhat battered one. At the end of March, he had $3.7 million available for his campaign. If there is a successful revolt against Andrew Cuomo’s candidacy and other leading mayoral candidates falter, he could win and could well be an excellent mayor. DONATE. Keep him in the mix. Keep five strong candidates in the mix. Rank all five of these candidates and do not rank Andrew Cuomo. One of those you rank will be the nominee. For those of you outside of New York City, I encourage you to provide some financial support to each of the five whose ranking I propose.
Zohran Mamdami, My #5 Rank
This is New York City. I know someone who lives in the same building as Zohran Mamdami. “Nice fellow.”
Thirty Three year old Zohran Mamdami has been the new sensation of this campaign. He ran second to Andrew Cuomo in the most recent poll. And Zohran Mamdami has very little in the way of name recognition. Inspired by Bernie Sanders Presidential campaign, Zohran Mamdami became a Democratic Socialist, though he runs for office as a Democrat.
If he were elected Mayor, he would have to prioritize his extraordinary variety of proposals. The Nation magazine consolidates his plans: “freeze the rent, subsidize grocery stores (actually create a low cost grocery in each borough to drive down the prices of the private groceries), free buses, and free childcare,”
Dayenu. Those would be enough without his police reform proposals, his housing plans, his taxing plans, his proposal to end tax exemption for NYU and Columbia. Only Donald Trump gets to try all of the things he wants to do. And Trump’s empire is teettering.
Zohran Mamdami is, he says, what Donald Trump hates. “A Muslim lefty from the other side of Queens.” He did not, however, come from nowhere. Born in the Indian community of Kampala, Uganda, his mother Mira Nair is an internationally known filmmaker (Her most familiar film is probably Mississippi Marsala). Zohran Mamdami ‘s father is Columbia University’s Herbert Lehman Professor of Government. Before that, he was the Director of the Markarere Institute of Social Research in Uganda
Zohran Mamdami has been living in New York City for 26 of his 33 years. He came to the United States from Cape Town where he lived for two years and attended the St. George’s Grammar School outside of Cape Town. In the United States, he attended the Bank Street School through eighth grade and then Bronx High School of Science before going on to Bowdoin College in Maine.
Returning to New York City, he got a job as a prevention counselor, played cricket semi-professionally, and tried performing rap in the subway system. While working on the City Council campaign of Khader El-Yateem in 2017, he earned a following of his own. He worked on two more unsuccessful campaigns before running and winning election himself in 2020 to the New York State Assembly. Like Brad Lander, Zohran Mamdamihas to find a way to keep pre-Israel Jewish progressives and Muslims with him politically.
I urge New Yorkers to rank him (5th is where I am putting him). Fill that list so there is no room for Andrew Cuomo. And take a chance with Zohran Mamdami. He appears to have become a gifted politician. He can be and probably will be an asset to New York politics and even national politics. DONATE to his campaign. You won’t be the first. He is good at raising money. At the end of March, he had $7.5 million to spend on his run for mayor.
One more thought
If you find one of these candidates unacceptable, here are three possibilities who you could rank and support.
State Senator Jessica Ramos, like State Senator Zellnore Myrie, was elected to the Senate by defeating one of the members of the Independent Democratic Caucus. In the Senate, she has proposed decriminalizing sex work and requiring, in any housing budget, just cause for evictions.
Political figure Michael Blake worked on the Barack Obama campaign in 2008 and served as a member of the Obama administration. He was elected to the New York Assembly in 2014 and served as a Vice Chair of the Democratic National Committee
Former Hedge Fund Manager Whitney Tilson was a founding member of Teach for America and was active in the effort to urge Joe Biden not to run for reelection as President.
None of these three have been able to make his or her campaign take off. Each is worthy of being ranked 5thto avoid the temptation to include Andrew Cuomo among those you rank.
