The heated Democratic mayoral primary in New York City has been engulfed by ideological arguments over the city’s management and the leadership vacuum among national Democrats.
Similar issues are animating the party’s race for public advocate, an office that serves as a kind of municipal government watchdog.
The incumbent, Jumaane Williams, is being challenged by Jenifer Rajkumar, a state assemblywoman from Queens, and Marty Dolan, a retired insurance executive.
Mr. Williams, who is supported by leading Democratic officials and organizations, has focused much of his message on how he plans to use the office to make New York more affordable. He has also vowed to ward off the threat of President Trump’s anti-immigration policies, especially given Mayor Eric Adams’s perceived cooperation with those efforts.
An Emerson College survey last month showed Mr. Williams more than 40 points ahead of his two challengers, with roughly 15 percent of voters still undecided. As a heavy underdog, Ms. Rajkumar, his main rival, has gone into attack mode.
While she has discussed her plans for how she would use the office, she has also questioned Mr. Williams’s progressive views and whether they match the city’s current political mood.
She has accused Mr. Williams of being beholden to the Democratic Party’s far-left flank, and has tried to portray him as a lazy custodian of the public advocate’s office.
At their first debate, Ms. Rajkumar asserted repeatedly that Mr. Williams “sleeps until noon,” echoing an accusation first leveled by Mr. Adams. Mr. Williams rejected the claim, pointing to the time he spends caring for his toddler in the morning.
It was not the first time Ms. Rajkumar has followed Mr. Adams’s lead.
For much of the mayor’s term, she has been a fixture at his public events, typically wearing a red dress and standing a few feet from him even when the topic had little to do with her or her district.
Some of her most barbed attacks on Mr. Williams have involved his work ethic.
A political cartoon she posted on social media this spring seemed to show him sleeping off the effects of consuming cannabis edibles. A recent mailer from her campaign with the headline, “Fraud or Fighter? You decide,” describes Mr. Williams as hostile to women and unfair to his residential tenants.
“Our city is going through too much right now to have public servants that don’t give everything to the job,” Ms. Rajkumar said in an interview, pointing to what she called Mr. Williams’s “divisive” views on public safety and funding for law enforcement.
“It’s not just about rhetoric or rallies,” she added. “This is about who can deliver results.”
The public advocate has an ombudsman role in New York’s government, helping residents navigate municipal services and championing their causes to city leaders. The post comes with a nonvoting City Council seat and is first in the line of succession to the mayor.
Historically, the public advocate has often been at odds with the mayor. And though the job carries little true executive power, it has been a launchpad for higher office. Previous public advocates include Letitia James, the state attorney general, and Bill de Blasio, who went on to become mayor.
Earlier this year, when Mr. Adams’s future as mayor appeared shaky amid a federal corruption case, Mr. Williams made preparations to assume the office.
Both he and Ms. Rajkumar have cited Mr. Trump’s policies and their negative implications for New Yorkers during the campaign, but questions remain about how the next public advocate will work with the next mayor.
As the top-of-ticket primary tightens to a two-person contest between former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and Zohran Mamdani, a state assemblyman and democratic socialist, the public advocate race is stress-testing the question of whether a the next City Hall administration will have an adversary or political ally in the office.
“I see my job as doing whatever I can to help the people of New York City, period,” Ms. Rajkumar said after a campaign event last Friday. “If that means standing up to the mayor and pushing the mayor, then I will do that. If that means collaborating with the mayor, I will do that.”
Mr. Williams said in an interview that if he were to be re-elected, his understanding of the job would not change with a new mayoral administration, although he acknowledged some “alignment” with Mr. Mamdani.
Mr. Williams has endorsed a slate of mayoral candidates that, in addition to Mr. Mamdani, includes Brad Lander, the city comptroller, and Adrienne Adams, the City Council speaker.
Mr. Williams said he was “extremely concerned” about the possibility of Mr. Cuomo becoming mayor.
“It’s interesting that people seem to be more scared of free buses than they are of a man who left in scandal,” he said, alluding to sexual harassment allegations that led Mr. Cuomo to resign as governor in 2021. Mr. Cuomo has denied the allegations.
Mr. Williams, a self-proclaimed “activist elected official,” has been one of the most recognizable progressive figures in city leadership. He has been arrested more than a dozen times while protesting over issues like tenants’ rights (for) and deportation proceedings (against). Before winning the office in a special election in 2019, he served on the City Council. In 2022, he challenged Kathy Hochul for governor.
Mr. Williams has emerged in the past year as a sharp critic of Mr. Adams over the mayor’s federal corruption indictment and cooperation with the Trump administration’s immigration policies. He has argued that the city is rudderless under Mr. Adams. The mayor, for his part, has cited Mr. Williams’s position as next in line as a reason he would not step aside.
In the past few weeks, Mr. Williams’s office has had to contend with allegations of a hostile workplace brought by a former staff member who said she had been assaulted by members of the public advocate’s security detail. Mr. Williams said his office had responded to the complaint and had hired an outside investigator to determine what took place.
“In a situation like that you have to act responsibly, you have to take it seriously and act immediately,” he said. “And we did all those things. So I’d be interested to know what is the other response that someone would have wanted.”
Ms. Rajkumar, who has campaigned as the “lady in red,” points to her work as director of immigration affairs for the state and as part of a team that litigated a class-action lawsuit against Novartis as credentials that qualify her for the position.
Tammy Osherov, a community board member who campaigned with Ms. Rajkumar during a get-out-the-vote effort in Kew Gardens Hills, Queens, last Friday, said she believed Ms. Rajkumar was a better representative of the Democratic mainstream. Ms. Osherov called Mr. Williams “too much of an activist.”
“I’m a moderate,” Ms. Osherov said. “But as the Council, some members and possibly the mayor could be hard left, then I think that there’s a lane to go more to the middle. That’s where I think that she can be effective.”
Nicholas Fandos contributed reporting.
Maya King is a Times reporter covering New York politics.
The post Will This Race Produce an Ally or Adversary for the Next New York Mayor? appeared first on New York Times.
