UP TO YOU: A man of the people
The New York City comptroller and progressive mayoral candidate takes on Andrew Cuomo, housing shortages, Donald Trump, and pizza
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Journalist and author Nate Schweber continues his coverage of the New York City mayoral race. This weekend, he shadowed Brad Lander, the New York City comptroller and veteran progressive, as he delivered a housing policy address, attended the “Hands Off!” rally in Manhattan, and dined with constituents. Can Lander turn his reputation as a fighter against corruption and for progressive change into a mandate to lead New York City? Can he beat back former governor Andrew Cuomo’s Trumpian attacks? And is he better positioned to deliver a populist, progressive message than newcomer Zohran Mamdani? Read on for some insight straight from the campaign trail.
By Nate Schweber
“Who else wants veggie?” mayoral candidate Brad Lander asked late Saturday morning inside Famous Calabria Pizza, as he slid steaming slices onto paper plates.
Packed in tight beside him sat nine women who live in public housing all around New York City. They had just stood with Lander as the New York City comptroller gave a press conference about his plans for housing improvements, in front of the Alfred E. Smith Houses on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. But by the time he finished, people were shivering in a rain that makes April deserve its reputation as the cruelest of months. The cozy pizzeria offered shelter, heat, and food.
It was only after everyone else was warm and chewing slices of pepperoni, cheese, and veggie that it became noticeable. Lander had served everyone else before plating a veggie slice for himself.
“Give Brad a napkin!” Karen Blondel, a longtime resident of the Red Hook Houses, shouted with a laugh when Lander tucked into his slice at last.
Was the scene of selflessness a setup because this reporter was watching?
Perhaps. But this kind of service to New York City is the record Lander, 55, is running on. As a city council member who helped found the progressive caucus, Lander sponsored legislation that expanded paid sick leave, protected tenants, sped bus service, and curbed stop-and-frisk. After his 2021 election as comptroller, the city’s fiscal watchdog, Lander rejected a $432-million migrant services contract that Mayor Eric Adams approved without bid. Lander boasts of his efforts to fight climate chaos by making the city pension fund “by far the boldest on de-carbonization” in the U.S. In 2021, The New York Times ranked Lander among the city’s “hardest-working and most effective public servants.”
In February, Lander drew national attention when he discovered that Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency had rescinded more than $80 million sent to New York City to house migrants. Lander became one of the first city officials in the U.S. to catch just how drastically the Trump administration would cut spending, and he prompted the first legal battle between the city and the new president as New York City sued to get its money back.
As a mayoral candidate, he has made his signature issue ending street homelessness, promising to place people with severe mental illness in vacant apartments. He would declare a “housing emergency,” to build 50,000 homes on public golf courses, and triple affordable housing subsidies (his fecundity at releasing long, detailed plans is Elizabeth Warren-esque). And he’d turn the watchdog’s eye he’s cast so successfully on Eric Adams towards Donald Trump.
In person, what comes across in watching Lander share lunch with these women, who for decades have struggled to improve their housing, is chemistry. They talk of years-ago meetings, and a recent get-together in Coney Island (Lander’s wife, Meg Barnette, flashes a photo of the fun on her cell phone). They debate current issues: unlicensed marijuana shops, crime. They all make eye contact, lean in, bump shoulders. They seem to enjoy each other’s company. Lander listens as much as he talks.
“I like that he’s a hugger,” said Karen McCreary, 56, a mother of four who lives in the Gowanus Houses. “Other candidates, they’re, like, shaking hands.”
“He’s in touch with his constituents,” Paula Smith, who lives in the Wyckoff Gardens Houses, added with a wink.
Conversing with constituents, soliciting ideas to fix problems, Lander seems more at ease than he does while campaigning and chucking insults. Andrew Cuomo is “a bully who’s a chicken” for not criticizing Trump, says Lander. Adams’ announcement that he will run as an independent in November’s general election is just “an attempt to extend his now lame-duck status as long as he can.”
Self-promotion seems to strike Lander as ungracious. It took nearly 90 minutes from shaking hands with Lander for him to brag that he was the one who discovered Trump and Musk took $80 million from New York City.
Around strangers and casual acquaintances, Lander acts like a charmingly neurotic party host. He starts conversations, and if there are any uncomfortable pauses, he is quick with a factoid or an anecdote. About early twentieth-century Brooklyn Borough President Edward J. Riegelman, for whom the Coney Island Boardwalk is named. About Kim Stanley Robinson’s climate novel NYC 2140. About the Works Progress Administration office near Madison Square Park, where people with disabilities advocated for jobs. About how he was spoofed in 2024 at Inner Circle — New York City’s version of the White House Correspondents Dinner — with a parody song: “Brad to the Bone.” (“Very funny,” he said, squeezing his brown eyes shut.)
Only a very jaded person could conclude Lander isn’t actually a friendly guy who just likes New Yorkers. Perhaps this is why Mayor Adams has been known to do a mocking impression of him. Considering how many New Yorkers now feel betrayed by Adams, that could count as a compliment.
In the race for mayor, Lander has a bigger problem than Adams: Andrew Cuomo, who leads in polls and fundraising and seems to just be warming up on the campaign trail. Cuomo made his tone and tactics clear earlier in the week when he made a lengthy speech about anti-Semitism at West Side Institutional Synagogue. At a time when the pro-Palestine demonstrations of summer 2024 have all but vanished, as student participants are being detained without criminal charges by the federal government, and its chief executive is a man who issued pardons to violent members of the mob that stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021 with QAnon signs and at least one Holocaust-cheering t-shirt, Cuomo somehow decided to hit the Trump-harmonic note that the greatest anti-Semitic threat in America today comes from the left — and he implied that Lander was an anti-Zionist, and thus an anti-Semite.
Lander, the city’s highest-ranking Jewish politician, gave a press conference to a gaggle of reporters beside the Manhattan Municipal Building the next morning. Gesticulating with both hands, he responded to Cuomo with a Yiddish phrase, which he translated into English.
Lander, who has described himself as a “progressive Zionist,” rejects Cuomo’s charge. “I don’t support the divestment and sanctions movement because it is opposed to Israel as a state,” he said. Cuomo’s attack — tying progressivism, Trump-style, to anti-Semitism by equating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism — seems designed to smash fissures in the progressive alliance. On March 29, the left-leaning Working Families Party endorsed four candidates for ranked-choice voting: Lander, Zohran Mamdani, Adrienne Adams, and Zellnor Myrie. The Working Families Party overlaps with the farther-left Democratic Socialists of America, some of whose members proclaim to be anti-Zionist but not anti-Semitic.
Lander, who condemned an October 8, 2023 protest promoted by a branch of the Democratic Socialists of America, and who also called for a ceasefire shortly thereafter, acknowledges the complexities and diversity of opinions around the issue. He said his own faith-informed position is that Israelis and Palestinians are all “created in the image of God.”
Lander also faces the complication of the surging candidacy of democratic socialist Mamdani, 33, who has overtaken Lander in some recent polls.
Lander suggested that Mamdani’s support, while enthusiastic, is narrow.
“Zohran has done a good job of channeling the frustrations many New Yorkers have about rising costs of living,” Lander said. “But it’s very important to build a broad coalition to prevent Andrew Cuomo from becoming mayor.”
Lander says he is the candidate who can deliver progressive wins. The question in these populist times is whether voters are more motivated by an experience-based promise of good governance or by the agitations of skilled media personalities and big names.
With regard to Trump, Lander sees his fight against the DOGE cuts as a pragmatic model: find where Trump is hurting New York City, go to court to stop it. He sees great promise in enlisting other big-city mayors across the U.S. in an alliance to fight Trump.
As Lander exited the subway at Bryant Park to march in the mass “Hands Off!” protest, he was recognized by Sharon Kennedy, who carried a sign that read “Grandparents Fight Trump.”
“Nice to see you, Brad,” she said, spreading her arms for a hug. “We’re supporting you!”
Nimbly, Lander threaded through a crowd of thousands to the front of the march. There, he slapped high-fives and stood between Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez and Public Advocate Jumaane Williams — a popular progressive who has endorsed Lander.
“Politically, sometimes people change course, and he doesn’t,” Williams said. “That’s what we need right now.”
As Lander marched, strangers hugged him, and he hugged them back. For much of the route, he walked arm-in-arm with Sharon Wier, who is blind, and an advocate for disabled people. Chanting “Hey-hey, ho-ho, Trump and Musk have got to go,” they fell back from the front and blended into the crowd.
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NYC could have had Maya Wiley but they voted for Adams who was/is creepy AF so I guess I shouldn't be surprised that Cuomo is up in the polls however I am shocked. Disgusted and shocked.
Brad Lander was my City Councilmember in 2017 when, in response to Trump’s inauguration,
he and Rabbi Rachel Timoner (of Congregation Beth Elohim, in Park Slope) formed #GetOrganizedBK, an activist pro-Democracy group that attracted a thousand residents at its very first meeting. When those of us who formed the subgroup that focused on combating antisemitism and Islamophobia held silent vigils in Grand Central Station, Brad stood with us. He was one of those rare politicians who meant what he said and said what he meant. I wish I still lived in New York City just to have the opportunity to cast my vote for him as he runs for Mayor.