Ben Franklin Dems' virtual forum hosts eight political candidates

The Benjamin Franklin Reform Democratic Club latest political forum featured a cast of local politicians, each of whom spoke about the next step in their political career.

In the forum last week, upwards of 100 spectators joined to listen to eight political candidates running for the positions of the city’s mayor and public advocate. Each were given an allotted amount of time to discuss the plans they look to execute if elected, followed by a Q&A.

Some of the candidates took shots at Eric Adams, who was not present at the forum, with criticisms about his indictment and his ability – or lack thereof – to continue to be the mayor of NYC.

Six of the eight candidates, Zohran Mamdani, Zellnor Myrie, Michael Blake, Brad Lander, Jessica Ramos and Scott Stringer, will face incumbent Eric Adams in the city’s upcoming mayoral election in November.

Mamdani, who represents the city’s 36th Council District in Queens, spent the first seven years of his life in Uganda before coming to the United States.

If elected mayor, Mamdani said he would work towards rent regulation, build more housing for working families, fill vacant commercial spaces and offer free childcare for all of the children in NYC.

“Life is simply too expensive across the five boroughs of New York City,” he said. “Most New Yorkers are struggling to afford their day-to-day expenses,” Mamdani said.

The Area Median Income (AMI) for a three-person family in New York City is $127,100, according to NYC.gov, while the median income for New Yorkers is $79,713.

A graduate of Fordham University and Cornell University’s Juris Doctor program, Zellnor Myrie has served as senator for the state’s 20th Senate District since 2019 after he worked for City Council as a legislative director in the Bronx.

Myrie was born in Brooklyn to immigrant parents from Costa Rica. “I think New Yorkers have a lot of opinions on a lot of things — but they need a city that is both safe and affordable,” Myrie said. “We see that opportunity slipping away for a lot of people.”

The crime wave in New York City has declined, according to the NYPD, but by 3 percent.

Having previously served as State Assemblyman for the 79th District in the south Bronx and the vice chair of the Democratic National Committee, Blake was born and raised in the Bronx and graduated from DeWitt Clinton High School.

Blake addressed the cost of living, health care, child care and access to quality housing as some examples of how the city can be improved if he is elected.

“We have an opportunity to do things differently,” Blake said. “The people of New York are giving too much and getting too little back.”

Lander, the city’s comptroller since 2022, led campaigns to ensure air-conditioning for every classroom in the city and secured hundreds of millions of dollars to generate more affordable housing. His audits and pension fund management have saved the city over $2.5 billion, according to Lander.

Before taking on the role of city comptroller, Lander was Councilman for the city’s 39th District in Brooklyn from 2010 to 2021 and co-founded the Progressive Caucus while he also defended workers’ rights.

“New Yorkers need leadership at City Hall — and right now we don’t have it,” Lander said. “We can have a mayor who brings honest and effective leadership and focuses on making the city safer and more affordable.”

Lander also pledged to end homelessness for people in NYC living with serious mental illnesses as his number one commitment in this campaign.

In April 2024, there were an estimated 350,000 homeless people in New York City, including people living in shelters, on the streets and doubled up in other people’s homes, according to the Coalition for the Homeless.

There are also about 2,000 people currently experiencing homelessness and living with serious mental illness, according to Lander’s office.

Having represented New York’s 13th State Senate district since 2019, Ramos sees this mayoral race as critical for the city.

“I think this is one of the most important races that we’ve seen in a while, given the critical juncture our country is in,” Ramos said, who added she wants to prove people can trust their government again.

Before she joined the Senate, Ramos worked under previous mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration and helped launch Universal Pre-Kindergarten, a federally funded prekindergarten program offered for free.

Primarily focused on finances to benefit childcare and education, along with property tax reform to provide relief to homeowners, Ramos began her political career in New York City Hall as a communications advisor and was later named director of Latino Media at City Hall.

Stringer, the city’s 44th and previous comptroller, once believed NYC was a place filled with hopes, dreams and endless possibilities, which he said are now not being realized.

“I decided to run for mayor because I do believe this city is at a crisis point,” Stringer said, particularly in reference to the increasing homeless population and felony assaults taking place throughout the five boroughs.

Just under 30,000 felony assaults took place in NYC last year, which was the highest number of felony assaults in 24 years and a 5 percent increase from 2023, according to information from the NYPD and NYC Open Data.

Stringer, who grew up in Washington Heights and attended John F. Kennedy High School in the Bronx was first elected as state assembly member for the 67th Assembly District in Manhattan in 1992.

He ran for six terms before he was elected the 26th borough president in Manhattan’s history and began his term in 2006.

After seven years as Manhattan’s BP, Stringer began his tenure as city comptroller in 2014 and served two four-year terms.

During his two terms, Stringer divested fossil fuels for the city’s pension funds and helped New York City become one of the first cities to commit to net zero emissions by 2040 while also pushing climate change investments including investments in renewable energy, energy efficiency and green real estate.

“If you are elected, how will you monitor funding for homeless shelters to make sure money is being used in the right way?” asked one forum participant who referred to themselves as an LGBTQ advocate.

“When I was city comptroller, I conducted full-on forensic audits of homeless shelters,” Stringer said in response.

Stringer personally visited several of the city’s shelters and witnessed several safety precautions, particularly about children, and vowed “to clean up the homeless shelter system once and for all.”

“I was in those shelters — and seeing these issues firsthand made me fight against the (Bill) de Blasio administration to make sure money wasn’t being given to bad operators and we really cracked down,” Stringer added.

In a quest to become the city’s next public advocate, Rajkumar, who represents the state’s 38th Assembly District, will look to combat anti-semitism, hate crimes and also focus on public safety and immigrant rights, among other causes.

In 2023, the NYPD reported 669 hate crimes having taken place in NYC, a 12.6 percent increase from the year before, information which is also published on the website of NYS Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli’s office.

Rajkumar, an Ivy-Leaguer born and raised in Westchester County before she moved to Queens, has advocated against several forms of hatred as a civil rights attorney and previously taught as an adjunct professor of political science at Lehman College.

In 2021, Rajkumar made history when she became the first South Asian woman ever elected to the New York State legislature.

“My parents came to this country from India with one suitcase and $300,” Rajkumar said. “I became a civil rights attorney because I wanted to give back to this country that gave (my family) so much.”

The city’s public advocate incumbent, Williams, who was born and raised in New York, spent nearly a decade as a council member for the city’s 45th District in Brooklyn before he resigned to take on his current role in 2019.

Williams, who is seeking a second term, commented on incumbent Mayor Eric Adams and his corruption charges and said that the situation hurts him.

“It pains me as a Black male and a city-wide elected official to see another Black male, who is an even more powerful city-wide elected official, to see the crisis he’s going through,” Williams said.

Williams, who has advocated for LGBTQ and reproductive rights throughout his political career, added his administration has passed more pieces of legislation than all of the city’s previous public advocates combined since the position was created in 1993.

In 2022, Williams ran unsuccessfully for governor, when he lost to incumbent Kathy Hochul in the Democratic primary.

Borough President Vanessa Gibson, along with Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz and Council member Eric Dinowitz, also attended Wednesday night’s virtual forum.