Brad Lander, Left-Liberalism, & The Tale of Two Cities

Comptroller Brad Lander's unique career, his quest to unite the disparate factions of the left against Mayor Eric Adams, and the race and class questions that will accompany his challenge

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On July 30th, New York City Comptroller Brad Lander put months of speculation to rest, and announced his decision to challenge incumbent Mayor Eric Adams in the Democratic Primary less than eleven months away.

Lander, a skilled political operator well-connected to organized labor, the Working Families Party, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, remains the early favorite to lead the non-Adams field, which thus far includes State Senators Jessica Ramos and Zellnor Myrie, as well as former Comptroller Scott Stringer. 

Yet, across several circles, there is a tinge of doubt as to whether Lander, who will command the most institutional support of any challenger, is actually the strongest candidate to win a majority of such a diverse electorate, and whether a white challenger from one of the city’s wealthiest neighborhoods is the well-equipped to defeat New York City’s second-Black Mayor.

Already, the “progressive zionist” and longtime member of Kolot Chayeinu, an independent and “famously liberal” synagogue in Park Slope, has faced constant questions with respect to the ever-escalating War in Gaza — the encapsulation of a man who has counted both Linda Sarsour and Dov Hikind as allies — an issue that has deepened existing divides throughout the Democratic coalition, perhaps nowhere moreso than New York City.

A card-carrying DSA member since the late 1980’s, proud co-founder of the City Council’s Progressive Caucus, and one time “Brooklyn Jewish, democratic socialist… for Hillary Clinton”, Lander will be tasked with coalescing — to some degree — the increasingly disparate factions of New York City’s political left, whose lack of coordination aided Adams’ narrow-win. 

Lander’s come-from-behind victory in the Democratic Primary for Comptroller, over Council Speaker Corey Johnson, is considered a blueprint for a winning coalition against Adams — threading ideologies and neighborhoods that split between Kathryn Garcia and Maya Wiley. 

However, said coalition would fit the mold of Lander’s Park Slope predecessor’s, former Mayor Bill de Blasio, Tale of Two Cities — except with the anti-Adams left assuming the mantle of the affluent, upwardly-mobile, and college-degree’d in the city’s urban core against the multi-racial mosaic of the outer boroughs; be they lower-income tenants in higher-crime neighborhoods, or middle-class families, homeowners and renters alike. This equation amounts to nothing short of both an optical and organizing challenge for a progressive movement desperate to build trust with New York City’s working class communities.

The math says that may not matter. Garcia, a political unknown, came within eight-thousand votes of the Mayoralty, despite being crushed across the city’s Black and Latino neighborhoods. Adams, at the peak of his powers, barely defeated a technocrat who had never before held elected office. Today, the Mayor, reeling from several federal investigations into his inner circle, is increasingly vulnerable. Were Lander able to simply add a couple percentage points to Garcia’s total in a handful of districts in Manhattan and Brooklyn, he would win. If the Comptroller managed to match, or even come close to his previous performance in Black neighborhoods (far better than given credit for), be it against Adams, or even Andrew Cuomo, Lander would also emerge victorious.

As Eric Adams digs in, race and class throughout New York City will rise to the forefront of our politics. Like it or not, Brad Lander, “an unassuming liberal” once content to operate in the shadows of the City Council, will be front and center.

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Like Bill de Blasio, the story of Brad Lander does not begin in the five boroughs. Born and raised in Creve Coeur, a “Reform Jewish” suburb outside the city of St. Louis, Lander grew up idolizing Abraham Joshua Heschel, a rabbi and scholar active in the civil rights and antiwar movements. His first taste of the headlines came when he, at the age of twenty, penned a thoughtful letter to his hometown newspaper asking to terminate his subscription due to the paper’s “rabid and racist anti-Arab sentiments…cold, prejudiced, and unfeeling attitude towards the Palestinian people.” The editor described Lander as “one of my favorite students at Shaare Emeth,” before stating that his former pupil’s cancellation request was “hurtful on a personal and professional level.” From an early age, Lander has publicly navigated his relationship to Israel and Palestine.

After earning his degree at the University of Chicago, where he became a card-carrying member of the Democratic Socialists of America, Lander followed his girlfriend (and eventual wife), Meg Barnette, to Park Slope; kicking off fifteen years in non-profit community development; first as the Executive Director of the Fifth Avenue Committee, and then as Director of the university-based Pratt Center for Community Development. In the latter role, Lander was frequently at odds with the Bloomberg administration’s approach to large-scale development, particularly with respect to the controversial Atlantic Yards project.

Despite the extension of term-limits, incumbent Council Member Bill de Blasio chose to run for Public Advocate in 2009 — a contest he convincingly won in a runoff against Mark Green — vacating the 39th district, which included parts of Borough Park, Kensington, Windsor Terrace, Park Slope, and Carroll Gardens. Lander, a progressive in one of the city’s most liberal neighborhoods, was well-positioned to succeed the future Mayor.

His chief competition — Josh Skaller, an “anti-development activist” (and enduring reminder that on the west side of Prospect Park, some things never change) who frequently opposed Lander’s pro-housing initiatives, and John Heyer, a conservative Catholic determined to cultivate support in Borough Park with his staunch anti-same sex marriage stances — while somewhat connected to certain elements of the district, proved ill-equipped for a largely left-leaning electorate. Furthermore, the politically savvy Lander, already well-respected in housing and tenant circles across the city, was attune to the machinations of running a successful campaign for office, in a way his opponents were not.

An integral aspect of those machinations — courting every corner of the district — was not without its challenges. Lander’s relationship to Dov Hikind, a conservative Assemblyman and Orthodox power broker, who, withstanding his routine support for Republicans and “fierce” opposition to gay marriage, nonetheless endorsed the proud member of Park Slope’s progressive Kolot Chayeinu synagogue. Indeed, as the two campaigned together on the streets of Borough Park, Forward called the moment an “Odd Political Alliance of Left and Right.” Throughout the primary contest, Lander was routinely forced to negotiate his association with Hikind, most notably when the Assembly Member railed against the inclusion of “gays, Gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses and other non-Jewish victims of the Nazis” in a Holocaust Memorial in Brooklyn, saying, “These people are not in the same category as Jewish people with regards to the Holocaust… To include these other groups diminishes their memory.” Lander released a statement saying he had to “strongly disagree with [Hikind] on this issue,” but remained “grateful” for his endorsement. 

Nonetheless, Lander remained the progressive frontrunner, underscored by The New York Times endorsement he received one week before the primary, who cited his “stronger history of working with the diverse issues the Council addresses” out of the “remarkable group” of candidates who appeared before the Editorial Board. However, Lander’s close ties to organized labor and grassroots left organizations like ACORN, cemented his victory, given said validators culminated in the support of the Working Families Party, which assumed a preeminent role in steering the campaign from the outset. When the polls closed and Lander was declared victorious with forty-one percent of the vote, his opponent’s cited the backing of the Working Families Party as the deciding factor in the race’s outcome. While the Hasidim of Borough Park, despite the pleas of Hikind, opted for the conservative Heyer by a 5-to-1 margin, along the tree-lined streets of Park Slope and Windsor Terrace, home to Lander’s liberal base, the new Council Member for the 39th District lost only two precincts.

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The beginning of Brad Lander’s Council career coincided with the fifth-consecutive election of a Republican Mayor, amidst record low voter participation that embodied the institutional and civic decay that had gradually diminished Democratic power in deep-blue New York City over the previous two decades. Christine Quinn, the City Council Speaker representing a district stretching from the West Village to Hell’s Kitchen, had nonetheless collaborated with Michael Bloomberg to extend term-limits, enabling the latter to receive a controversial third-term as Mayor.

“Distaste” over Bloomberg’s revision to the city charter pushed twelve incoming Council Members, most of whom were supported by the Working Families Party, to organize. Together, they formed what would be known as the “Progressive Caucus,” co-chaired by Lander and Melissa Mark-Viverito, a Puerto Rican-native representing East Harlem and the South Bronx. The leadership of Mark-Viverito and Lander, amidst a discouraging period for liberalism across New York City, foreshadowed a turning-point for the fortunes of progressive politics.

In their first term, the Progressive Caucus proved integral in the passage of paid sick leave, to the chagrin of the Republican Mayor, whose veto was overturned. Much of the caucus — including Lander, Mark-Viverito, and Letitia James — lent critical early support to Bill de Blasio longshot Mayoral bid, whose “Tale of Two Cities” message centered many of the caucuses priority issues, like tenant protections. Lander’s predecessor in the City Council went on to win a dominant victory in the Democratic Primary, before ending two-decades of Republican control of City Hall with a landslide in November. Soon thereafter, De Blasio, the Progressive Caucus (which had swelled to twenty members with the incoming class), and organized labor came together to lift Melissa Mark-Viverito, with Brad Lander by her side and in her ear, to the Speakership.

Less than three years after the formation of the caucus, progressives had seized power. Once relegated to countering the Speaker and the Mayor, Lander now found himself “at the center of the solar system,” with some colleagues privately referring to him as the “shadow speaker.” The Council Member from Park Slope used this power to great effect — passing legislation to ban discriminatory employment credit checks, implement air-conditioning in all public school classrooms, and bolster super PAC disclosure laws. Along with colleague and friend Jumaane Williams, Lander helped “shepherd” the Community Safety Act to passage, a considerable step-up in police accountability at a time when the department was embroiled in controversy over its stop-and-frisk policy and covert surveillance of Muslim communities.

However, that final thread — police reform — ultimately exposed fissures in the caucus that foreshadowed trouble. Ritchie Torres of the Bronx abruptly left the caucus following intense backlash following the first-term Council Member’s decision to “water down” another police accountability bill, the “Right To Know Act,” at the behest of the Mayor and NYPD brass. Daniel Dromm of Jackson Heights, an original member, also left in anticipation of the upcoming Speaker’s race. With Mark-Viverito term-limited, the selection of the next Speaker would test the caucus’ ability to retain the institutional power they had worked so tirelessly to build.

The progressive caucuses’ preferred successor was Julissa Ferraras-Copeland, Queens’ first Latina elected official, who broke with the infamous county organization to back Mark-Viverito’s speakership bid. Ferraras-Copeland, a native of Corona who chaired the powerful Finance Committee, appeared destined to replicate Mark-Viverito’s progressive coalition on her way to the gavel. However, in spite of the speakership at her fingertips, Ferraras-Copeland declined to seek re-election, opting to relocate to Maryland to spend more time with her husband and young son.

De Blasio, assuming office at the zenith of his political capital, proved invaluable in elevating Mark-Viverito; whereas four years later, the Mayor opted for a more hands off approach. Said vacuum was filled by the “Democratic Party establishment and its powerful bosses,” nowhere more so than Queens County, helmed by Rep. Joe Crowley. Outflanked four years prior, Crowley made sure to not repeat the same mistake twice, pooling votes with Bronx Democratic Chair Marcos Crespo to anoint Corey Johnson, who represented the same district on Manhattan’s West Side as Christine Quinn, as the Council’s next Speaker.

The “degree to which progressives lost and the party establishment won” became evident as Speaker Johnson — in consultation with county leaders — doled out the Council’s marquee committee assignments.

Despite retaining his title as Director of Policy, Lander was stripped of his post as chairman of the Rules committee. Jumaane Williams and Bill Perkins, both Progressive Caucus members, were also left without committees to chair. According to The New York Times, “Of the 18 Democrats joining Johnson on the powerful budget negotiating team, only six are [progressive] caucus members; under Ms. Mark-Viverito, three-quarters of the team were caucus members.” Those who defected from the caucus, like Torres and Dromm, were handsomely rewarded with plum assignments, chairing the council’s committees on investigations and finance, respectively. Jimmy Van Bramer, a caucus member from Western Queens who was the majority leader under Mark-Viverito, said, “there’s no doubt that there’s been a sea change.”

As Lander watched Johnson outmaneuver the Progressive Caucus in the behind-the-scenes brokering of the Speaker’s race, he likely did not foresee that the two would be pitted against one another, again, less than four years later. However, the grudge match would be waged in the public-eye, and, while the powerful institutions that aided Johnson’s rise still retained influence, the victor would ultimately be decided by the Democratic voters of New York City’s five boroughs.

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Brad Lander declared his candidacy for New York City Comptroller to little fanfare, with his unassuming announcement in Gotham Gazette coming a full two-and-a-half years before the Democratic Primary. By the time the field materialized two years later, Lander would be joined by State Senator Brian Benjamin of Harlem, former Congressional candidate Michelle Caruso-Cabrera (who ran for the Bronx–Queens based 14th District despite residing in Manhattan), State Assembly Member David Weprin of Eastern Queens, and State Senator Kevin Parker of Flatbush.

However, this cohort — which nonetheless included many well-funded, sitting elected officials with some degree of institutional support — proved to be rather weak. Brian Benjamin, despite the full complement of Upper Manhattan’s heterogenous politics behind him (from Rep. Adriano Espaillat to Manhattan Democratic Chair Keith Wright), was consistently damaged by negative stories which detailed the Senator’s ties to subprime mortgage lenders as well as potential straw donor chicanery (with the latter foreshadowing his indictment one year later). Once a promising entrant, Benjamin went on to finish third in his own Senate district. While Benjamin’s baggage was unearthed throughout the Comptroller campaign, the notoriously ill-tempered Kevin Parker’s issues were already well-documented — with the latter running an unserious, lackluster campaign, also losing his home Senate district, but by an even wider (2:1) margin. Were it not for a generous shift of redistricted lines by the Special Master, Parker would assuredly be out of Albany by now, rather than repeating another hopeless bid for Comptroller four years later. The once-vaunted Queens County establishment lined up behind David Weprin, the scion of a well-connected political family with two decades in elected office. Yet, all the “Queens Machine” could deliver was a fourth-place finish in the World’s Borough, as Weprin had little juice beyond the Hasidim in Borough Park, Orthodox of Midwood and Far Rockaway, in addition to the white ethnic homeowners scattered throughout the farthest reaches of the city. The fact Michelle Caruso-Cabrera, one year removed from a fifty-eight point drubbing at the hands of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, ultimately finished in third place, says it all.

This weakness, telegraphed months before ballots were cast, was picked up on by close observers. Eight years prior, the race for Comptroller was upended by the late entry of former Governor Eliot Spitzer, whose considerable profile and vast personal wealth instantly catapulted him into the lead, a lead which he only relinquished to the eventual victor, Scott Stringer, in the final weeks of the campaign. Come the Spring of 2021, with several candidates en tout, yet no elected official beyond that of the City Council Member or State Senator, there was an opportunity for another late entrance, once again. Even Lander — the early frontrunner with an inside-track to the hearts-and-minds of the ascendant progressive movement, who hailed from the vote-rich blocks of Brownstone Brooklyn that had crowned the previous Mayor — was lacking in name-recognition.

Should a formidable candidate emerge late — someone with established name recognition and an already-assembled fundraising war-chest, who remained anchored to the affluent, civically-engaged corridors of Manhattan while retaining close ties to organized labor which would ensure a strong performance across the outer-boroughs — Brad Lander’s path to victory would be muddied.

Such a scenario would come to fruition on March 9th, already over a week into the petitioning period to get onto the ballot. 

Old foe Corey Johnson, New York City Council Speaker, would run for Comptroller.

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Having kept a low-profile throughout the winter months — which followed a tumultuous budget negotiation the previous summer and culminated in the Speaker’s surprising exit from the Mayor’s race for mental health reasons — Johnson was now back in the game.

Already maxed out with respect to public matching funds, owed to years for fundraising for his aborted Mayoral campaign, Johnson’s entrance was a blow to Lander. The Hotels Trade Council, following the Speaker’s deliverance on “two of [the union’s] biggest legislative priorities during his tenure” endorsed him out-of-the-gate — with DC37 (public sector employees), 32BJ (building workers), 1199 SEIU (healthcare workers), and the UFT (public school teachers) eventually following suit. Rep. Ritchie Torres had told Lander to “expect his support,” only to renege and endorse Johnson upon the latter’s announcement. A top aide to Congressman Jerry Nadler phoned the West Side Council Member in an effort to urge Johnson to reconsider his decision, with Nadler himself telling The New York Times, “Brad really wants the job. It’s not a second job because he dropped out of anything.”

New polling showed the Council Speaker ahead-and-shoulders above the field, with Lander consistently mired in single-digits. Undoubtedly, Johnson’s entrance had significantly altered the state-of-play. Nonetheless, over one-hundred days remained. 

A former Progressive Caucus member himself, Johnson was broadly considered left-of-center for much of his City Council tenure. However, the previous protest summer saw a considerable shift with respect to his reputation. In the wake of the murders of George Floyd and Breanna Taylor, activists and progressive lawmakers demanded a one billion dollar (or one-sixth) cut to the NYPD’s budget, a call the Council Speaker “promised” to heed. However, Johnson ultimately “deferred to leaders of the Black, Latino and Asian Caucus” like Majority Leader Laurie Cumbo, who rejected the pleas of protesters who descended onto City Hall, leaving Johnson to concede, “to everyone who is disappointed that we did not go farther, I want to be very honest and candid. I am disappointed as well.” Lander, along with eight other progressive Council Members, ultimately voted “no” on the budget.

While Johnson’s ascension to the speakership was hailed as the “Democratic establishment flexing its muscles — forcing the progressives to retreat,” the months thereafter proved anything but. The man who had sat happily in the front row of the gallery, “leaning over the brass railing with a wide smile,” as Johnson was officially elected Speaker by his Council colleagues, Rep. Joe Crowley, found himself blindsided by defeat at the hands of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez less than six months later. That fall, six former members of the Independent Democratic Conference, a collection of renegade, conservative Democrats who enabled Republicans to maintain control of the State Senate, were handily defeated in primaries across the state. The following summer, public defender and democratic socialist Tiffany Cabán came within a mere sixty votes of winning the Democratic Primary for Queens District Attorney, a race in which Lander lent his early support to the insurgent. In 2020, middle-school principal Jamaal Bowman upset sixteen-term incumbent Rep. Eliot Engel in a North Bronx, Westchester County-based 16th congressional district, while NYC-DSA swept four state level campaigns from Astoria to Sunset Park.

When Brad Lander entered the Council, New York City had been ruled by a Republican Mayor for almost two decades. Not only was liberalism in retreat, progressivism was nowhere to be found. Now, eight years removed from the triumphs of Bill De Blasio and Melissa Mark-Viverito, the movement had recaptured momentum once again — and this time, it would be behind the co-founder of the City Council’s Progressive Caucus, Brad Lander.

Even before Johnson declared, the constellation of liberal and progressive institutions that had collectively reshaped politics in New York since 2018, but nonetheless remained divided with respect to their top-of-the-ticket preferences, had collectively given Lander their blessing – to the tune of endorsements from organizations like the Working Families Party and Make The Road to former colleagues like (now) Public Advocate Jumaane Williams and Antonio Reynoso, not to mention influential Members of Congress like Jerry Nadler, Nydia Velázquez, and Jamaal Bowman. 

With Lander needing to come from behind to win, time was of the essence. Not only was he behind Johnson, the prohibitive favorite, Lander found himself trailing Michelle Caruso-Cabrera. His coalition, while formidable, needed a catalyst. On March 31st, they received just that.

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Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez never makes early endorsements. Given so much can change on a campaign in a matter of days, the Parkchester-native historically takes a wait-and-see approach, often weighing in sometime during the final month — not only when the contours of the campaign are better defined, but when voters are most likely to be paying attention. This approach served Ocasio-Cortez well in the Mayoral campaign, where a scramble ensued across the progressive left when Scott Stringer was accused of sexual harassment. Notably, Ocasio-Cortez avoided that debacle entirely, and eventually backed Maya Wiley (helping to triple her poll numbers in less than one week). Yet, in the race for New York City Comptroller, such considerations were immaterial.

Ocasio-Cortez’s endorsement, by way of The New York Times, marked her earliest foray into a New York Primary (for a non-incumbent) before or since, while coming at a critical inflection point for Lander. Quickly, TV spots were reserved, filmed, and aired prominently featuring Ocasio-Cortez as Lander’s top surrogate in both English and Spanish. Corey Johnson, once-upon-a-time crowned Speaker by the felled “King of Queens,” watched as Joe Crowley’s dynamic replacement moved to prevent his next coronation.

Quickly, it became a two-horse race, with Lander and Johnson trading barbs — from the Park Slope Council Member’s penchant for speeding in school zones, to the Speaker’s “absenteeism.” However, despite steadily gaining ground on the frontrunner, Lander still trailed by eight points with less than two weeks before Primary Day. In the final ranked choice voting runoff, polling indicated Johnson would win by over twenty points. 

Without a strong performance throughout Johnson’s home borough of Manhattan, particularly in the affluent, vote-rich neighborhoods below Central Park North, Lander would be finished.

On May 10th, The New York Times Editorial Board endorsed Kathryn Garcia, boosting the little-known Sanitation Commissioner to an eventual second-place finish (and within eight-thousand votes of the Mayoralty). Against Eric Adams in the final ranked-choice runoff, Garcia won the borough of Manhattan with greater than two-thirds of the vote. On May 27th, a similar blessing was bestowed onto Alvin Bragg, a Harlem reformer who had represented the families of Ramarley Graham and Eric Garner. Bragg, who trailed the wealthy frontrunner, Tali Farhadian Weinstein, by a considerable margin before the Gray Lady’s backing, went on to win the Democratic Primary for Manhattan District Attorney by less than ten-thousand votes.

Lander had been a favorite of The New York Times Editorial Board for years, dating back to his first campaign for City Council, where the paper of record offered their support. Dubbed an “unassuming liberal” turned “power broker,” Lander drew a rave (and rare) profile during his second-term. Johnson, as the Council’s most visible member during Mayor Bill de Blasio’s up-and-down second term, also frequently drew the affection of The Times. Both Council Members were counting on the Editorial Board — Johnson to seal the deal, Lander to push him over the top. 

One week into June, with Early Voting less than one week away, there was still no word.

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On the Tuesday morning of June 8th, two weeks before the Democratic Primary, The New York Times Editorial Board released their decision: Brad Lander would be endorsed as New York City’s next Comptroller.

“This is no time to elect a political novice or someone who might have preferred a different office. There is a temptation to use the position of comptroller to enact larger agendas that more properly belong with the mayor. We were won over by Mr. Lander’s prudence and competence, and we hope that he keeps his attention focused on the job at hand.” (The New York Times)

The endorsement catapulted Lander at the campaign’s most critical juncture, and with each passing day, Johnson’s lead dwindled — until it evaporated entirely. With two days remaining, Brad Lander, after trailing the entirety of the campaign, found himself ahead.

Primary Day came and went, and Lander’s late surge was evident. The Park Slope Council Member, backed by New York’s leading liberal and progressive institutions, led the field of ten with 30.88% of the first round vote. The Speaker, with the full-might of organized labor (not to mention four of the New York City’s Congressional Representatives) by his side, stumbled to 22.47%, over seventy-thousand votes behind the new frontrunner.

Nonetheless, ranked-choice-voting offered Johnson a lifeline. At the top-of-the-ticket, Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams was leading the Mayoral field with, essentially, a more robust version of Johnson’s Comptroller coalition. With almost a ten-point lead over the third placed Michelle Caruso-Cabrera, Johnson was all-but-guaranteed to reach the final runoff round. As the likes of David Weprin, Kevin Parker, Brian Benjamin, and Caruso-Cabrera were eventually eliminated, Johnson was poised to pick up votes in Borough Park, Midwood, Central Brooklyn, Harlem, and the Bronx — neighborhoods where he had finished second. While the Speaker had ultimately lost Manhattan by double-digits, the margin was recoverable should he carry the outer boroughs.

With each passing elimination, Johnson slowly gained ground on Lander.

But, not nearly enough ground to win.

In the final round against Johnson, Lander not only held his twelve point lead in Manhattan, he won the borough of Brooklyn – the most populous County in the State of New York – by sixteen points, culminating in a wire-to-wire victory by twenty-five thousand votes.

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Countless neighborhoods across the five boroughs which had split their votes between Maya Wiley and Kathryn Garcia, delivered resounding support to Brad Lander. 

Lander won the millennial-heavy, leftist-friendly tenements of the East Village and the old-moneyed condos and brownstones of the West Village. He easily won gentrified six-years ago Prospect Heights and gentrified sixty-years ago Brooklyn Heights. Support for Lander spanned the socialist-hotbeds of Astoria, Greenpoint, and Ridgewood to middle-class historically-Jewish communities like Riverdale, Forest Hills, and Hudson Heights. Maya Wiley won the rowhouses of South Slope and Greenwood Heights, the industry-to-residential converted buildings that line the low-lying streets of Gowanus, and the apartment houses home to Bay Ridge’s Arab community — as Kathryn Garcia’s performance increased with each ascending block (and income bracket) in Park Slope, while remaining the choice of the homeowners and cooperators that line the promenade better known as Shore Road. Whereas Brad Lander won every precinct, without fail, in both neighborhoods.

With Brooklyn’s professional class, Lander achieved a degree of coalescion that was not known to either Wiley or Garcia (until the former’s elimination in ranked choice voting). He had significantly more juice than Wiley in the affluent spheres of Manhattan, while packing a greater punch than Garcia in the working-class blocks of the Bronx. In Hasidic and Orthodox enclaves across Brooklyn, not to mention the leftist strongholds of Sunset Park and Greenpoint, Lander remained more popular than either of his corollaries at the top-of-the-ticket. In Black neighborhoods, Lander’s totals either narrowly trailed the renowned civil right’s attorney (Southeast Queens, Harlem, Northeast Bronx), or even surpassed her (East Flatbush, Brownsville, East New York) — while easily outpacing Garcia.

Yet, the voters that decided the race for New York City Comptroller were not those who also cast ballots for Kathryn Garcia and Maya Wiley – but rather for the eventual victor, Eric Adams. For, across the latter’s electoral strongholds, Corey Johnson left meat on the bone. 

A review of exhausted ballot patterns — voters that ranked neither Lander nor Johnson — bears out this narrative. Over forty-percent of ballots were exhausted in Orthodox and Hasidim neighborhoods like Borough Park and Midwood — enclaves that ultimately comprised Adams margin-of-victory at the top of the ticket. While Lander was losing these neighborhoods, Johnson was picking up few additional votes. 

Across New York City’s Black neighborhoods, which vary considerably in class and ethnic composition, Eric Adams’ support was consistently overwhelming — far from the same could be said about Corey Johnson.

In the Caribbean-heavy precincts of Flatbush, Lander won the 42nd Assembly District, represented by Adams-ally and Brooklyn Democratic Leader Rodneyse Bichotte, by eleven points. At the heart of Bedford-Stuyvesant, he won the 56th Assembly District by ten points. Each district, both with electorates approximately two-thirds Black, were simultaneously won by Eric Adams by forty-two and twenty-eight percent, respectively. In East New York, Garcia failed to break eight percent, while Lander took over one-third of the vote. Aided by the support of local Assembly Member Nick Perry, Lander netted thirty-eight percent of ballots in East Flatbush – whereas Kathryn Garcia barely finished above seven-percent. 

Had Brad Lander simply split-the-difference with Kathryn Garcia — if their percentages in working-class districts were averaged together — regardless of the former’s support from The New York Times Editorial Board, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and the Working Families Party: Corey Johnson would have been elected Comptroller. 

Be it overperforming Garcia or his rival underperforming Eric Adams — or somewhere in between — Lander, given his opponent’s stronger base in Manhattan, would not have prevailed were it not for his manageable margins in Black and Latino neighborhoods across the city.

In fact, Lander only finished below thirty-percent in a single district: the historically-Black neighborhood of Morrisania south of Crotona Park in the Bronx, where fewer than six-thousand residents cast a ballot for Comptroller. Whereas Johnson finished below twenty-five percent in the city’s two highest turnout Assembly Districts, which span Windsor Terrace, Park Slope, Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill and Brooklyn Heights. Lander’s margin over the Speaker in those two aforementioned districts — which amounted to over thirty-thousand votes — was greater than Corey Johnson’s entire lead in the Bronx — twenty-thousand votes — a borough he nonetheless won by twenty-six points.

If there was any statistic that could better encapsulate the decline in political power of the working class voter, amidst the rise of the professional class voter, more than the above paragraph — the author would be hard-pressed to think of one.

While not the “Rainbow Coalition” of David Dinkins (or even Bill de Blasio), which electorally united affluent liberals and the city’s Black and Latino working-class, Lander’s effort provided a blueprint for how a white, progressive candidate could win a Citywide election.

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Brad Lander planned to run for Mayor – in 2029 once Eric Adams was term-limited.

However, a series of missteps from the incumbent — including four-separate FBI investigations into the Mayor’s orbit — highlighted by record-low approval ratings and declining poll numbers, created an aura of weakness around City Hall. The word “indictment” with respect to Hizzoner has been on the minds of journalists and staffers alike for almost one year. In fact, not since Abe Beame, presiding over New York City amidst a crippling fiscal crisis that led to a devastating erosion of social order characterized by rioting, arson, and widespread poverty — had a sitting Mayor been so vulnerable.

Rather quickly, the question of whether-or-not Adams would face a challenge became one of when and whom – not if.

Almost half-a-century ago, Beame’s struggles had led to the entry of several high-profile figures into the Mayoral race. Three Congressmen: Ed Koch, the Greenwich Village reformer turned reactionary champion of the death penalty; Bella Abzug, the feminist firebrand who came within ten-thousand votes of becoming a United States Senator; and Herman Badillo, the first Puerto Rican elected to Congress (and the Bronx Borough Presidency), who finished second in the Democratic Primary the previous cycle. While the first Black candidate to run for Mayor was hampered by the racially polarized electorate, Percy Sutton helped lay the foundation for another Harlemite, Manhattan Borough President, and member of the storied “Gang of Four” to prevail twelve years later. One of the lesser-known candidates (at the time), runner-up Mario Cuomo, ultimately served three terms as Governor, and was famously a late-state budget away from running for President. 

Today, the left’s biggest stars, like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, have little impetus to seek an executive position that has, without fail, been a career dead-end for over a century. Jamaal Bowman, prior to his eighteen-point defeat at the hands of Westchester County Executive George Latimer, would have been a formidable candidate, were it not for the fact that the Congressman — despite being raised in East Harlem and serving as middle-school principal in the Eastchester section of the Bronx — has resided in Yonkers for a decade. The only other citywide elected official, Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, who would have won had he ran three years ago, showed little interest. Burdened by few actual responsibilities, armed with a large staff, and aided by the opportunity for limitless retail-politicking and community networking, the Office of the Borough President has long served as a stepping-stone to Gracie Mansion (Adams himself was Brooklyn Borough President for eight years). Yet, neither Mark Levine (Manhattan), Antonio Reynoso (Brooklyn), or Donovan Richards (Queens) chose to take the plunge, despite all harboring ambitions for higher office in some capacity. Levine, the favorite in the Comptroller Primary, remains well-positioned to make a credible bid for Gracie Mansion sometime in the next decade. Despite prodding from several progressive activists and De Blasio alumni during a well-sourced dinner party on Staten Island’s North Shore, Reynoso, after a brief flirtation with a bid for City Comptroller, opted for a return to Borough Hall. Richards, the candidate to the left of the Mayor best-equipped to make inroads with the incumbent’s base of Black voters, may be more inclined to wait out the retirement of his district’s Member of Congress — thirty years his Senior. The City Council’s Progressive Caucus, flush with left-leaning talent in their first term, would be too junior a body to elevate a candidate capable of dethroning an incumbent at the citywide level, particularly the Mayor.

Into this void, Brad Lander stepped up.

Without a doubt, the specter of race will follow Lander, at the echoing of Eric Adams, throughout the primary. Adams, raised in South Jamaica by a single mother, would like nothing more than to cast Lander, the child of a St. Louis suburb and Park Slope homeowner, as the poster-child of the white progressives who wish to cast him out of office. This dynamic not something the world of progressive politics is naive to, as last fall, Ben Max reported: “Nearly every progressive elected official and advocate I spoke with said that while they love Lander’s politics, they do not like the racial dynamics of running a white man to unseat the city’s second Black mayor.” While invoking David Dinkins as a comparison, Adams will cast Lander as his Rudy Guliani, in an effort to rally Black New Yorkers behind the besieged incumbent. To the triple-prime Black seniors of Concourse Village, Atlantic Plaza, Springfield Gardens, and Co-op City — who remember Dinkins fondly, and whose dissatisfaction with the Mayor, while legitimate, has not reached the point of no return — this appeal cannot be underestimated.

Winning the Black vote, nearly one-third of the Democratic electorate, even against a significantly diminished Adams, is out of the question. However, if Lander can match his performance in the Comptroller Primary — or even come close, it will be difficult for him to lose.

Lander will have the first chance to unite and maintain the delicate electorate coalition between good-government liberals and technocrats, ideologically-motivated progressives, and the rising democratic socialist constituency. How Lander manages this increasingly difficult task, further strained by the War in Gaza and raging debates over how to combat New York City’s housing crisis, will make-or-break his campaign for Mayor. 

Already, Lander has been the subject of several stories centering his views with respect to Israel and Palestine. Headlines like Brad Lander’s “Israel Problem”, “​​Brad Lander’s looming NYC mayoral candidacy raises concerns in Jewish community”, and “How the Israel-Hamas War Could Shape the New York City Mayoral Race” accompany the framing that the Comptroller’s “progressive zionism” is too liberal on the issue that has polarized wide swaths of the Democratic electorate following October 7th. His successor in the City Council, Progressive Caucus Co-Chair Shahana Hanif, is set to receive a well-publicized, but ultimately doomed challenge from Maya Kornberg, who will seek to make the campaign a referendum on incumbent’s support for a ceasefire, in a district with considerable Muslim and Jewish populations. This bitter contest featuring Hanif, the first Muslim woman elected to the City Council and a longstanding ally of Lander, is set to play out in the Comptroller’s political backyard of Park Slope.

In what promises to be a close race, how will Lander relate to homeowners in the farthest reaches of Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx incensed by the Mayor’s City of Yes plan — be they the pseudo-suburban, historically-Jewish enclaves of Riverdale, Forest Hills, and Kew Gardens that previously cast their ballots for Lander, the ethnic whites and rapidly-growing Chinese population in Southern Brooklyn and Northeast Queens that constituted Andrew Yang’s base, or the Black middle-class of Wakefield, Canarsie and Flatlands that ultimately crowned Eric Adams? Will Lander risk alienating elements of his political base by supporting rezonings like Arrow Linen in Windsor Terrace?

Negotiating these ever-emerging fault lines proved to be a task too tall for Scott Stringer — against far weaker competition. Kathryn Garcia and Maya Wiley simply split this fragile coalition, instrumental in reshaping New York’s political landscape over the past six years, in two — culminating in Adams’ razor-thin margin of victory.

Should Lander stumble, State Senators Jessica Ramos and Zellnor Myrie will be waiting-in-the-wings, but they too will face persistent questions about the strength of their respective campaigns. Coalescing and expanding the Latino electorate across the five boroughs, far from a monolith to say the least, poses a stiff challenge for Ramos, and represents a political project far greater than any single election cycle. Peeling labor off the incumbent Mayor, whose administration has inked several lucrative union contracts, will prove rather difficult — even for the Chair of Labor in the State Senate. Myrie, who represents Adams’ former Senate seat in Albany, lacks a defined base comparable to the other entrants, and may have trouble winning his own Senate district — which includes Park Slope and Windsor Terrace, Lander’s two strongest neighborhoods, not to mention the Adams-friendly Crown Heights, where the Mayor took greater than 50% of the vote. 

Instinctually, Lander will gravitate towards the center — capturing half of the city’s voters will be top of mind in that calculus. Slowly, one will hear the word “progressive” less, and the words “competence” and “management” more. In doing so, Lander will cede ground to his left. While Myrie, who now accepts donations from real estate and when asked, gave a noncommittal answer with respect to seeking an endorsement from the Working Families Party, and Ramos, who eschews the progressive label in favor of touting her labor bona fides and maintains well-documented beef with a popular, left-leaning Congresswoman — remain a marginal threat on this front — rumored-entrant Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist Assembly Member from Astoria, would be primed to deliver a strong performance in several districts where Lander exhibited strength three years ago. While such a development could diminish Lander’s first-round tally, a leftist candidate on the ballot like Mamdani, could increase turnout among millennial voters, the incumbent’s worst demographic — in turn, potentially delivering a deluge of votes to Lander in the latter rounds of ranked-choice-voting.

Furthermore, despite any “moderation” of his political positions, the Comptroller will almost assuredly be able to count on the enthusiastic support of both the Working Families Party and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, elements fundamental to his ascension thus far. The Working Families Party has expressed their intent to “lean into the power of ranked choice voting,” and, of the existing field, Lander’s ties to the organization remain the strongest. Ocasio-Cortez, who stuck her neck out for Lander when his odds appeared rather dire, will first assess viability — of which the Comptroller has the voting base, name recognition, money, and connections to remain at the forefront of that conversation — before determining her course of action. It likely won’t hurt that Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign manager at the time of her previous intervention, Rebecca Rodriguez, is now a senior advisor to Lander. 

The New York Times decision to withdraw from local endorsements remains a blow to Lander, who maintained an inside-track to the Editorial Board’s blessing. Nonetheless, The Times abdication also harms the prospects of Myrie and Ramos, particularly in Manhattan, who could have benefitted handsomely from the media elevation which proved to be the most consequential endorsement from the previous cycle. Paper of record withstanding, as of now, Lander’s chief competition for the affluent, vote-rich precincts below Central Park North remains Scott Stringer, far diminished compared to the ex-Comptroller’s position four years ago.

Come June 2025, Lander can count upon staunch support throughout the New York City neighborhoods that consistently boast the highest voter turnout. Next summer, this cohort will come to the polls extra motivated, which remains the Comptroller’s greatest advantage over each of his opponents — including the Mayor.

This contingent — from Dan Wakefield’s “disenfranchised white middle-class” to the upper-crust of the urban core, habitually beset by varying degrees of political consciousness, civic participation, and ideological fervor, yet ultimately united by their attainment of a collegiate or postgraduate degree — is now large enough to win, almost by itself, a Democratic Primary in New York City. Kathryn Garcia, who never held elected office and polled in the single-digits for the duration of her campaign, was carried by this bloc to within eight-thousand votes of Gracie Mansion. 

Four years later, Brad Lander can do the same on his way to victory. Not only is the incumbent under-water following a slew of federal investigations — potentially to a fatal degree in a ranked-choice-primary — his political base, particularly middle-class Black families in the outer boroughs, are leaving New York City at an alarmingly high rate, devastated by the rising costs of housing and childcare. Amidst the exodus of working families, the migration of young people into the city has continued unabated, fueling a tide of gentrification that has washed over dozens of Brooklyn neighborhoods in the past decade. While far more racially diverse than the generations of yuppies that preceded them, these early-career newcomers, untethered to the political institutions of old, are increasingly left-leaning in the age of Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. While some remain indifferent to local politics, particularly in higher-income neighborhoods like Murray Hill and Greenwich Village, many of those who frequent Ditmars Boulevard, Tompkins Avenue, and Jefferson Street have been activated politically — with more to come. If they know of Eric Adams — that knowledge is almost assuredly couched in negativity. Those who reside in Brooklyn Heights or the Upper West Side — bankers, lawyers, management professionals — while not entirely naive to the rising costs crushing the city’s middle-class a couple subway stops away, are nonetheless insulated, to a greater degree, by their wealth. Should they choose to remain in New York City, their future and day-to-day survival is not defined by precarity.

With each passing year, New York City’s Democratic electorate, mirroring population trends, becomes whiter and wealthier — putting the already tenuous math behind the Mayor’s re-election prospects in a precarious position.

The optics of this coalition are known to Lander. Linda Sarsour, a friend of longtime friend of the Comptroller and well-known Muslim political activist, told The New York Times “[Lander] is very conscious of being white, and he’s very conscious of being male and conscious of his privilege, which is something that you don’t really see often.”

Were Brad Lander to prevail in this manner — defeating Gotham’s second-Black Mayor in spite of the support of New York’s working families and the multi-racial working-class, rather than because of them — City Hall would be gained, but what might be lost along the way?

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