Four years ago, left-leaning Democrats were struggling to coalesce behind a mayoral candidate to lead New York City. Their fissures helped a moderate Democrat, Eric Adams, win the primary and become mayor.
Now, as Mr. Adams seeks a second term under the cloud of a five-count federal indictment, the city’s progressive leaders are hoping to do whatever it takes to install one of their own in City Hall — or, at the very least, make sure that Mr. Adams is defeated.
“The left was extremely disorganized and divided last time, and we want to make sure that we have a strategy to keep our side together,” said Ana María Archila, a co-director of the state’s Working Families Party. “We must transfer the mayor’s office from someone who has been working for the rich and his friends to someone who will work on behalf of working families.”
The city’s relatively new ranked-choice voting system, which allows voters to rank up to five candidates in order of preference, could lead to interesting alliances and novel strategies from major interest groups.
The Working Families Party will back a slate of candidates in its preferred order, and will ask voters to leave Mr. Adams — and perhaps former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, should he enter the race — off their ballots entirely. Other progressive groups and unions will make their own endorsements in the coming months.
The hope on the left is that voters will express their anger over President Trump’s victory in November by flocking to the polls, and that they will choose a candidate who wants to stand up to Mr. Trump, not embrace him as Mr. Adams has recently done.
Many of the president’s actions in his first week in office — including taking steps to end D.E.I. initiatives and birthright citizenship, exiting the Paris Agreement to fight climate change and pardoning the Jan. 6 rioters — have only strengthened that desire, especially given the mayor’s refusal to criticize the moves.
But with five months left until the primary, none of the left-leaning candidates have quite broken away from the pack.
At least five mayoral hopefuls consider themselves progressives: Brad Lander, the city comptroller; State Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani; State Senator Zellnor Myrie; State Senator Jessica Ramos; and Scott Stringer, the former city comptroller.
Of these candidates, Mr. Lander and Mr. Stringer have the most name recognition, though not nearly as much as Mr. Adams or Mr. Cuomo, who resigned in 2021 after a series of sexual harassment allegations. Mr. Lander has raised the most money among the five, and he recently secured a key endorsement from Jumaane Williams, the city’s public advocate.
But it is Mr. Mamdani, a democratic socialist lawmaker from Queens, who seems to have the most momentum. He raised $641,000 during the recent fund-raising period, significantly more than any other candidate, and has raised the most from individual donors by far.
Mr. Mamdani, a self-described former C-list rapper, has a formidable online presence. One video, in which he connects the rising price of halal cart meals to legislation that would reform the city’s street vending rules, has racked up more than 350,000 views on X. Another that shows him taking a quick dive into the frigid waves at Coney Island to call for rent freezes has drawn more than a half-million views.
Ms. Archila said she was not surprised by the early enthusiasm for Mr. Mamdani, 33. She said he was reaching young people who are “fed up with the status quo.”
“He has clear ideas and a disposition toward listening to people who are often pushed to the margins — those two things are generating a lot of support,” she said.
Mr. Mamdani has proposed a series of populist plans, including free buses, rent freezes on rent-stabilized apartments and city-owned grocery stores. But he barely registers in polls and has received criticism over his calls to defund the police and his views on Israel; he introduced legislation, called the “Not on Our Dime” Act, in 2023 that would have curtailed financial support for Israeli settlements.
Some Jewish leaders have already moved to oppose Mr. Mamdani, and have urged Jewish and pro-Israel voters — especially those whose party alliances shift from election to election — to make sure they are registered as Democrats by February. Mr. Adams and Mr. Cuomo are staunch supporters of Israel and might welcome the chance to face Mr. Mamdani.
Progressive leaders understand that they may face significant headwinds in the nation’s largest city, which has been on something of a more conservative trajectory since Mr. Adams’s win in 2021. That trend continued in November, when Mr. Trump won 30 percent of the vote in New York City, a seven-point jump since 2020.
Mr. Adams and Mr. Cuomo may also be more likely to capture disaffected centrist Democrats who may have voted for Mr. Trump in November over issues like crime, immigration and affordability.
Two other candidates are also vying for the moderate lane: Jim Walden, a lawyer who is suing to run on the Independence Party ballot line, and Whitney Tilson, a former hedge fund executive, both of whom have raised significant amounts of money and expressed admiration for former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, a centrist.
Roughly a third of New York City’s Democratic primary voters identify as progressive or liberal, so a successful candidate needs to appeal to a broader swath of the electorate. Former Mayor Bill de Blasio found that coalition in 2013, drawing much of his support from left-leaning and Black voters.
In the 2021 race, the city’s progressives did not coalesce around a candidate until the final weeks, when many on the left threw their support behind Maya Wiley, a civil rights lawyer.
But critical endorsements from left-leaning luminaries like Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez did not materialize until the primary was less than three weeks away. The Working Families Party backed Mr. Stringer as its first choice before switching its support to Dianne Morales, a progressive activist, and Ms. Wiley, and then to only Ms. Wiley.
Ms. Wiley, who ultimately came in third in the primary, also resisted calls to cross-endorse Kathryn Garcia, a former sanitation commissioner who finished second. Mr. Adams beat Ms. Garcia by fewer than 8,000 votes.
Under the ranked-choice voting system, if more of Ms. Wiley’s voters had listed Ms. Garcia next on their ballots, their votes could have helped Ms. Garcia overtake Mr. Adams once Ms. Wiley had been eliminated.
Some Democrats believe that Mr. Myrie may be the progressive candidate with the broadest appeal. An ambitious politician and lawyer who has been compared to a young Barack Obama, Mr. Myrie has campaigned at Black churches and focused on proposals to build housing and create a universal after-school program.
Mr. Stringer ran for mayor as a progressive in 2021 before his campaign was derailed by allegations of sexual harassment. He has moved toward the center this time, presenting himself as a technocrat who could make the city more livable.
Ms. Ramos, who has focused on universal child care and labor protections, could appeal to union members and Latino voters. But she is trailing in fund-raising.
Mr. Lander, who already holds a citywide office and has raised significant amounts of money, is perhaps best positioned to confront Mr. Adams and Mr. Cuomo, and the mayor has often taken aim at him.
Mr. Lander and Mr. Stringer have both commissioned polls to argue that they are the strongest candidates to take on Mr. Cuomo, who leads with more than 30 percent of first-round votes. Mr. Lander will release his poll this week showing that he would benefit from second- and third-choice votes and that Mr. Cuomo has a high unfavorable rating.
When Mr. Lander criticized the mayor’s efforts to reduce street homelessness, Mr. Adams said it was “great for him to have all these grand ideas.” But the city needs “adults, not the cult, to tell us how to fix this problem,” he said.
“Listen, you can’t say cult without Brad,” Mr. Adams said, apparently in reference to the progressive movement. The mayor’s office declined to clarify his remarks.
And in his State of the City speech earlier this month, Mr. Adams previewed the attacks he may be planning on officials like Mr. Lander who have called for reducing the police budget: “When others wanted to defund the police, we defended them.”
Instead of emphasizing his progressive credentials, Mr. Lander has argued that he would be a competent manager. He held a major fund-raiser at Brooklyn Bowl this month, where he was introduced by Mr. Williams, the public advocate and a prominent critic of Mr. Adams.
Mr. Williams has pledged to rank Mr. Lander either first or second on his ballot. He said onstage that Mr. Lander would protect New Yorkers from the worst of Mr. Trump’s policies.
“I am very, very proud to support somebody that I have been working with for over 15 years, who has stood up when it was difficult to do so,” he said.
Susan Kang, a political science professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said that Mr. Mamdani and Mr. Lander were doing a “great job of showing the hypocrisy and failures of Eric Adams.”
She urged progressive candidates to educate voters about how the ranked-choice system works.
“What matters is they have to have some messaging around ‘rank us one or two,’” she said. “Otherwise it’s going to be Cuomo.”
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