Commentary: Can Brad Lander really beat Eric Adams?

Brad Lander, the New York City comptroller, finally made it official on Tuesday, launching his mayoral campaign against Mayor Eric Adams. Lander joins a field that already might include former city Comptroller Scott Stringer, state Sen. Zellnor Myrie and Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani. Other contenders might still emerge, but for now at least, Lander is the most prominent politician trying to dethrone Adams in the Democratic primary next June.

Polling has been sparse and fundraising numbers aren’t complete. Lander raised relatively little in the last six months and only carries $156,512 in his campaign account, but he’s a historically strong fundraiser who should have little trouble making up ground against Stringer and Myrie, who posted strong hauls earlier this month. The public matching funds system will help. He’s a former City Council member and experienced pol, having won a tough citywide race in 2021. 

Adams and his allies are already attacking Lander, which means, at the minimum, that they are worried. If Lander runs the race he hopes to run, Adams could be a one-term mayor. 

Before analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of Lander’s candidacy, it must be stated outright that this primary will be entirely about Adams – and whether New Yorkers want him to stay or go. He is the incumbent and all focus will be on him. His approval and favorability ratings have declined steadily since 2022 and he is, by Quinnipiac University’s measure, the most unpopular mayor since at least the 1990s. Progressive voters despise him, while more moderate Democrats question whether he can adequately manage the city.

More crucially, a scandal cloud hangs over Adams’ head that might only get thicker with time. Since last year, federal investigators have been probing his fundraising and his curious relationship with the Turkish government. At least one former aide is reportedly cooperating with the corruption investigation. 

No one knows where this will lead. What is clear, though, is that federal investigators appear confident enough to leak key details of the case to mainstream newspapers. In the past, this has meant indictments were forthcoming – either of close aides or the principal. If Damian Williams, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District, indicts Adams, his political career is over. No sitting New York mayor has ever been indicted. 

If aides are indicted and Adams is spared, he could potentially pursue the survival strategy of ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who won a third term even as his confidant, Joe Percoco, was indicted on corruption charges. Cuomo, who is now mulling his own run for mayor, managed to distance himself from Percoco. Whether Adams would have the political capital to do the same remains to be seen.

Lander has several serious strengths heading into a matchup with Adams. As the city comptroller and a longtime policy wonk, he can make the case to a broad swath of the electorate that he can effectively manage a municipal government which has been bleeding top talent and failing to pursue ambitious initiatives on the scale of former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s universal pre-kindergarten program or former Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s street redesigns and infrastructure projects. He is deeply schooled in the workings of government and can say, with actual credibility, he knows how to make the city function. 

As a proud progressive from Park Slope, Lander will be able to appeal to New York’s vote-rich neighborhoods. Brownstone Brooklyn is his for the taking, as are the socialist-friendly belts of northern Brooklyn and western Queens. He ran strongly in Manhattan in 2021 and would be able to compete with Stringer for the West Side liberals who reliably turn up in primaries. A winning Lander coalition would look something like a fusion of the Maya Wiley and Kathryn Garcia blocs in 2021: affluent and upwardly mobile professionals in Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Queens, with a few anti-Adams voters thrown in who are desperate for some technocracy. 

Lander would have the inside track for a number of coveted endorsements, including the New York Times editorial board, the Working Families Party, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. In a ranked-choice voting election, all of this could be enough to put him over the top. The working-class vote is on the decline in New York, and a white progressive who performs poorly with outer-borough Black and Latino voters can still find a way to win. 

In 2020, Lander supported Elizabeth Warren for president, and Warren couldn’t win because her base was almost entirely made up of college-educated voters. But the college-educated do punch above their weight in modern New York City Democratic primaries. A path to victory may run through them.

Lander does have tangible weaknesses he may or may not be able to rectify. Another Park Slope brownstone-owning New York transplant won a mayoral race, but Lander doesn’t have de Blasio’s biracial family – the famed “Dante” ad helped de Blasio win over outer-borough Black voters – nor his 2013-era cosmopolitan je ne sais quoi. He presents as more bourgeois, more of a stereotypical upscale liberal. There’s a degree to which Adams is excited to run against Lander because the contrasts are so stark: a Black ex-cop who once got beat up as a teenager in a Jamaica police precinct versus a Marshall Scholarship-winning striver from a pleasant St. Louis suburb.

Just as young progressives, older liberals and many activist-minded Democrats will be thrilled to vote for Lander, others will be indifferent or outright hostile. Lander will struggle to make inroads with Black voters in Central Brooklyn and Southeast Queens. Latinos across the city don’t know him well. Asian voters, who have trended rightward in recent years over concerns about crime and specialized high schools, could view him as a threat to their livelihoods. Wealthier white voters who liked Garcia for her more conservative stances, like an embrace of charter schools or her support for the real estate industry and finance class, may decide Lander is too liberal for their tastes and opt for Stringer. And though Lander is Jewish, the city’s sizable Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods won’t vote for him because he’s a progressive Zionist who has allied himself with politicians and organizations who are openly supportive of the Palestinian cause.

Israel will be thorny for Lander because he could be caught between a proverbial rock and hard place. The anti-Zionist protesters and organizers, many of them belonging to the Democratic Socialists of America, may see Lander as suspect because he identifies as a Zionist and supports a Jewish-majority state. He is not marching with burgeoning organizations like Jewish Voice for Peace or Within Our Lifetime. Pro-Palestinian student protesters and their allies seem more likely to gravitate toward Mamdani, an outspoken critic of Israel. At the same juncture, Orthodox Jews effectively view Lander as someone who is in league with anti-Israel organizations – never mind that he has always called himself a Zionist.

Among the many liberals and leftists who want Adams defeated, there are concerns of a split field. Some are fretting that the left, like in 2021, will be too disorganized and too divided to win City Hall. Adams won, in part, because Stringer crumbled from a #metoo scandal and Wiley, a former de Blasio administration counsel who ran in the progressive lane, was not strong enough to overcome Adams or the runner-up, Garcia. The WFP, to some mockery, originally co-endorsed three candidates before settling on Wiley. Another progressive contender who enjoyed a burst of media attention, Dianne Morales, saw her campaign fall apart amid infighting and allegations of mistreatment. 

Lander, Stringer, and Myrie are all, in theory, competing for somewhat similar votes. They will battle for media attention and dollars. The WFP lacks the leverage to forcefully consolidate the field, as they might have been able to do 15 years ago. For Adams, this sort of internecine warfare will be welcome.

But he can’t rest too easily. Ranked-choice voting prevents wasted or split votes – a voter can rank up to five candidates – and cross-endorsements could prevent Adams from winning reelection. Had Wiley and Garcia cross-endorsed in 2021 – Andrew Yang and Garcia aligned instead – Garcia might have been elected mayor. The 2025 primary could resemble 1977, when another beleaguered Democratic incumbent from Brooklyn, then-Mayor Abe Beame, faced down a crowded field and lost. Adams could still win a second term. He could also, like Beame, fail to even reach the top two, staring up at the rivals forcing him into retirement.