Jim Walden, a prominent and well-regarded lawyer who has represented causes across the political spectrum, will announce on Thursday that he is entering the New York City mayor’s race.
Mr. Walden, a former federal prosecutor, plans to focus on cleaning up city government and will propose a “zero-tolerance policy on corruption.” He is a political independent, and has not decided which party’s nomination to seek in the June primaries.
He is the sixth prominent candidate to challenge Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat who was indicted last month on federal corruption charges. If Mr. Adams were to resign, party affiliation would not matter since a special election would be nonpartisan.
Mr. Walden said in an interview that corruption was a pressing campaign issue, though he declined to comment on the indictment and said that Mr. Adams had a right to defend himself.
“Whether it’s the Adams administration or many, many other administrations, corruption is a huge problem,” he said, adding that he would offer a detailed plan to “tackle graft in a way that no one has ever thought of before.”
Mr. Walden will occupy a distinct lane in the field: The five Democrats who have announced mayoral campaigns are all to the left of Mr. Adams, a centrist. They are also practiced politicians, and Mr. Walden has never run for office.
He is also not a household name and will have to move quickly to introduce himself to New Yorkers and to raise money. He said he would invest $500,000 of his own money in his campaign as a loan to get started.
Mr. Walden said that name recognition would not be a problem and that he was well known in many communities.
He has been involved in major New York City cases with political implications, including securing $250 million for public housing tenants in 2018. He also represented a Fire Department official who accused Mr. Adams of pressuring him to approve a Turkish Consulate project that is part of the indictment.
“For those communities that don’t yet know me, I guarantee that they know some cases that I worked on,” he said.
Mr. Walden, who said he left the Democratic Party in 2006, described himself as “nonideological” and mentioned several issues that are important to him, including transgender rights.
“There are some issues on which I am more progressive-leaning, and there are other issues where I’m more in the center,” he said.
Mr. Walden, 58, who lives in Brooklyn Heights, cut his teeth prosecuting narcotics and mob cases at the United States attorney’s office in the Eastern District. In 2015, he started a boutique law firm and announced recently that he would hand over leadership to a committee.
He represented Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in a case over ballot access in the presidential race and a group challenging New York State Assembly election maps in 2022. In 2018, he also settled with the city’s Education Department in a sprawling class-action lawsuit filed by parents over bullying, leading to changes for students.
Some of his cases have been contentious among some left-leaning Democrats: He faced criticism for representing opponents of a bicycle lane along Prospect Park West in Brooklyn.
He said he has recruited 30 policy advisers for his campaign, and created an anti-corruption committee led by Daniel R. Alonso, a former federal and state prosecutor.
“I’ve rarely met someone as idealistic about the power of government to solve people’s problems, and he’s never been partisan in that pursuit,” Mr. Alonso said.
As an illustration of Mr. Walden’s ideological distance from New York’s left-wing leaders, he criticized the City Council over how it treated his mentor, Randy Mastro, a top aide to former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani who was nominated to serve as corporation counsel under Mr. Adams.
Mr. Walden said their attacks on Mr. Mastro were “deeply offensive to every lawyer that does pro bono work to be essentially vilified for trying to help people.”
Marianne Pizzitola, president of the New York City Organization of Public Service Retirees, which represents roughly 250,000 retirees, said that Mr. Walden’s firm was representing the group in a legal fight over health care, and he had been an ally. She said that retirees would support his campaign.
“He seems to be a unique candidate — his ideology is not locked into traditional politics,” she said.
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