Brad Lander Racks Up Endorsements from Five West Side Democratic Clubs

Five of the West Side’s influential Democratic clubs have endorsed City Comptroller Brad Lander in his race to unseat Mayor Eric Adams in the June 24 Democratic primary.

That was considered a setback in particular for Scott Stringer, a former borough president in Manhattan who once had Lander’s job as city comptroller and who had already landed the backing of Congressman Jerry Nadler and, on the East Side, the Lenox Hill Dems.

All candidates now have to contend with Andrew Cuomo, who resigned in disgrace as governor over three years ago, but who officially started his political comeback bid by joining the race for mayor over the weekend.

Prior to the latest entry in the race, those lining up behind Lander on the West Side include: Broadway Democrats, covering Morningside Heights, Manhattan Valley, southwest Harlem and Manhattanville; Three Parks Independent Democrats on the Upper West Side; Village Independent Democrats in Greenwich Village; Hell’s Kitchen Democrats; and the Upper West Side Action Group, a political chapter of the Swing Left and Indivisible.

There are now ten declared candidates in the race heading toward the June 24 primary. In addition to Cuomo, the incumbent Eric Adams, Lander, and Stringer, it includes: NYS Assembly member Zohran Mamdani; NYS Senator Jessica Ramos, investor Whitney Tilson; former Bronx Assembly member and vice chair of the Democratic National Committee Michael Blake, New York State Senator Zellnor Myrie and lawyer and former prosecutor Jim Walden.

City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams (no relation to Eric Adams) has not officially entered the race but has formed a committee indicating she is at least seriously considering it.

In a recent poll conducted by Tusk Strategies of likely Democratic voters, Cuomo was the preferred candidate of 38 percent of the potential voters even before his official announcement. The left- leaning progressive Mamdani was a surprise in second place with 12 percent, and the incumbent Eric Adams dropped to third with 10 percent.

Lander was pulling 7 percent, and Scott Stringer had 5 percent. Adrienne Adams was favored by only 2 percent.

Fresh from his West Side endorsements, Lander spent part of the day in a petitioning drive that his campaign staffed set up outside Zabar’s on Feb. 25.

“This is the first day of petitioning,” he told Straus News as he glad-handed pedestrians. He said he counts three issues as the top in this year’s campaign: “the cost of living, especially affordable housing; public safety, especially the subways; and having a mayor who works for New York, not Donald Trump.”

Lander said he was waiting to see how Judge Dale Ho will rule on the request by the Trump Justice Department request to withdraw the five-count corruption charges against Mayor Adams. Lander is in a unique position since he is one of the people who could convene what is known as “the inability committee” that could remove a mayor. The committee was established after Ed Koch suffered a minor stroke in 1987.

The committee, in addition to Lander, includes Speaker of the City Council Adrienne Adams; Corporation Counsel Muriel Goode-Trufant; the longest-serving borough president, which in the current lineup is Queens Borough President Donovan Richards; and a deputy mayor appointed by Eric Adams.

Adrienne Adams has expressed skepticism that the committee could be used to remove Eric Adams because she believes it was intended to cover a mayor who is physically incapacitated. It has never been invoked.

Lander, who has already called for Adams to resign, said he is awaiting the judge’s next ruling, set for March 8. In the initial request, the Trump Justice Department said it wanted to withdraw the five- count indictment but said it could be reinstated after the November election. “If you’re going to dismiss the indictment, do it in a way that you can’t hold it over him,” said Lander. Judge Ho has appointed Paul Spencer, a former solicitor general from the George W. Bush administration, to formulate a legal argument as to why the judge should not honor the prosecution request to drop the case.

”We have to see what the judge does before we make any decisions,” Lander said.

Meanwhile, Lander who was seen as a firm member of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, and who once called for defunding the police, has been sounding more like a centrist on the campaign trail. He’s now calling for the NYPD to add 1,500 more officers to its force and said he’d keep Jessica Tisch as NYPD Commissioner if he is elected. “I think progressives, myself included, were slow to respond to the elevation of crime and disorder that came through and out of the pandemic and that has given us many of the challenges that we’re dealing with today in all these areas, in gun violence and mental health and homelessness, in retail theft and hate violence.”

While Lander is back in the pack among the candidates, he is first among the four candidates who are eligible for matching funds, with about $6 million so far. Adams was deemed ineligible for matching funds in the wake of his indictment. In addition to Lander, only three other candidates are getting full matching funds: Mamdani, Myrie, and Stringer. Billionaire Whitney Tilson had 68 percent of his matching fund requests rejected by the Campaign Finance Board on Feb. 28. Tilson apologized to the CFB and said his campaign was working to rectify the problems.