The Working Families Party is taking steps to run a candidate in the general election for mayor, teeing up what could shape up to be the first competitive election in New York City in more than a decade.
Ana María Archila, the co-director of the left-leaning progressive party, confirmed to THE CITY that the group had already taken steps to run a place-holder candidate on the Working Families Party line.
That person, an attorney named Gowri Krishna, would potentially step aside after a party convention over the summer to make way for one of the WFP’s four endorsed mayoral candidates — City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, City Comptroller Brad Lander, Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani and State Sen. Zellnor Myrie — if none of them succeeds in the June Democratic primary.
While the WFP had been taking steps to preserve their ballot line in the general for weeks, their announcement comes hours after Mayor Eric Adams said he would forgo the Democratic primary and run as an independent in the general election next fall. That would pit Adams against the victors of the Democratic and Republican primaries, assuming he makes it onto the ballot by the end of May — and now potentially a WFP candidate.
Adams has been trailing Democratic challengers in polling and fundraising. For months, as federal corruption charges loomed over the mayor, he withheld public criticism of Republican President Donald Trump, while instructing his deputies to do the same. María Archila said Adams choosing to run as an independent was a scenario they’d seen coming for months.
“We have been preparing for this scenario,” she said. “We could see the writing on the wall that Eric Adams was not actually putting in place an infrastructure for the primary and he also was not ready to quit.”
The party has endorsed four candidates in the ranked choice Democratic mayoral primary, which allows Democratic party voters to rank up to five of their preferences. But all the candidates on the WFP-endorsed slate are currently trailing in the polls behind Andrew Cuomo, who has hoovered up the support of many former Adams allies in recent weeks. The general election in November is not ranked choice.
“We believe New Yorkers don’t need to settle for a politician that is riddled with scandals and corruption and unwilling to stand up to Trump,” María Archila said. “Those are the battle lines in the primary…. And that will also be the case in the general election.”
The WFP has long been a thorn in Cuomo’s side, backing challenger Cynthia Nixon in the 2018 primary as Cuomo was seeking reelection. The party came close to running Nixon in the general against him but ultimately caved, giving Cuomo their ballot line.
Still their opposition drew Cuomo’s wrath. “If you ever say, ‘Well he’s better than a Republican’ again, then I’m gonna say, ‘You’re better than a child rapist.’ How about that?” he told WFP leaders in a recorded phone call that was later leaked to reporters.
The former governor subsequently took aim at the party, changing state regulations which threatened their ability to stay on the ballot. The change required them and any other minor party to secure at least 2 percent of ballots cast every two years in the gubernatorial or presidential races, though they’ve been able to clear that threshold ever since.
For more than a decade Democratic primary nominees have handily won in general elections in New York City since as far back as 2009, the last time Mayor Mike Bloomberg ran as an independent for his third term.
Adams’ announcement punctuated a dizzying 24 hours in the New York political sphere after federal Judge Dale Ho dismissed the federal corruption case that had hung over the mayor since last fall. Though Ho found that Trump’s Justice Department request to drop the charges in exchange for the mayor’s help on immigration enforcement “smacks of a bargain,” he said he had no power to appoint an independent prosecutor to carry the case forward.
Speaking to reporters Thursday morning, Adams insisted he still holds Democratic Party values. He contended Ho’s decision came too late for him to mount a successful primary campaign to maintain the party line.
“Now I’m able to do what I do well and that’s communicate, with voters and that’s, and that’s what I’m, that’s what I’m going to, what I’m going to do,” Adams said. “I’m a Democrat. I said that over and over again. And beliefs are those democratic values that everyday working class people believe in, and I’m going to focus on that.”
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