On Monday, eight Democratic mayoral primary candidates participated in a town hall hosted by the NYCLU, the NAACP, and The Cooper Union. With the contest three weeks away, this event was one of only a few left for candidates to make an impact with the public outside of their own campaigns’ outreach and advertising.
As they addressed the moderator’s questions on a broad range of issues, the Democratic hopefuls – City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams; State Senator Zellnor Myrie; Dr. Selma Bartholomew; former Assemblymember Michael Blake; former Comptroller Scott Stringer; State Senator Jessica Ramos; Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani; and current Comptroller Brad Lander – found themselves addressing the effect that candidates absent from the event were having on the race: Mayor Eric Adams, who is running as an independent and therefore not a direct factor in the primary, and polling frontrunner Andrew Cuomo, who skipped the event.
Some seized the opportunity to tie their absent rivals to the politics of Donald Trump. Asked how he would address deep funding cuts expected from the White House, Blake reiterated his tentpole policy of withholding tax funds in kind from the federal government, but also sought to link the issue to the incumbent mayor, saying that part of the problem is that “we have, right now, a mayor that is more concerned with staying out of jail than helping the people.” The line might have resonated more if Eric Adams were still under the cloud of federal charges, which have been dropped, although his continued chumminess with POTUS, including a visit to the White House where Trump claims he was “thanked” by Adams, is not to be dismissed.
Mamdani, who continues to narrow the polling gap between him and Cuomo, which is down to eight points in the latest polling, took the opportunity to draw the connection between the former governor and Trump through their shared backers. “If we elect Mr. Cuomo as the next mayor, we are also electing a person who’s currently receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations from the very donors that put Donald Trump in Washington DC,” Mamdani said, calling out hedge-fund billionaire Bill Ackman in particular.
Mayor Adams also drew criticism from candidates for not resisting White House policies on immigration. City Council Speaker Adams (no relation to the mayor), who stated that she has had to lead the city at times when the incumbent “would not or could not,” highlighted her lawsuit against him and the Trump administration for seeking to reopen the ICE office on Rikers Island. “Not under my watch, not as your mayor,” she assured the audience. Lander also called out City Hall on immigration for not providing more legal aid to immigrant communities, pointing to a recent instance where a Venezuelan migrant high school student was detained by ICE after attending an immigration hearing: “Dylan should’ve had a lawyer with him when he had to go to the immigration hearing, and we can do that.”
Even as the discussion covered everything from environmental justice to education, migrant policy loomed large, with ICE arrests at federal buildings shocking the city’s public, and schools reporting that migrant students are becoming truant due to their families’ fear that they could be taken by law enforcement, despite Mayor Adams’ continued assurances.
The candidates proposed a variety of strategies for pushing back. Blake suggested designating houses of worship, schools, and nonprofits as “safe havens,” a policy seconded by Senator Ramos, while Assemblymember Myrie proposed creating a New York-specific work permit he dubs “Work NYC.” An ambitious plan, but one that Myrie seemed to admit was born out of a desperate situation: “it’s not a slam dunk, I’ve read the case law, but we’ve got to fight and we’ve got to do something.”
Democratic primary candidates will be reuniting for a televised debate on Wednesday, June 4th, with another to follow on Thursday, June 12th.
