Working Families Party picks Mamdani first in ranked-choice endorsements for NYC mayor
NEW YORK — The Working Families Party ranked state Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani in the top slot for its mayoral primary slate Friday night, following hours of closed-door deliberations.
The progressive organization picked City Comptroller Brad Lander second, City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams third and state Sens. Zellnor Myrie and Jessica Ramos fourth and fifth in the hopes of defeating frontrunner Andrew Cuomo.
'The polls and fundraising numbers tell a clear story about who is best poised to defeat Cuomo — that candidate is Zohran,' New York WFP co-directors Ana María Archila and Jasmine Gripper said in a statement.
The party endorsed four candidates in late March, but did not rank them. The idea at the time was to eventually coalesce behind the person best poised to beat the former governor.
That pronouncement led to speculation before Friday's endorsement vote whether the party would only anoint one person or go with a ranked slate. Democratic voters can pick up to five candidates in ranked order ahead of the June 24 primary.
While Mamdani has been polling second to Cuomo — with an Emerson College survey this week placing him within 9 points of the former governor in the final round — Lander has a long history with the organization. He has been a longtime WFP member and was aligned with the group on legislation he pursued during his time in the Council.
With the progressive standard bearer's position solidified, eyes are now turning to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who carries significant heft in New York City Democratic primaries and has yet to endorse with under four weeks until voters head to the polls.
'The Working Families Party has fought for a more affordable New York for decades and I am honored to lead their slate as their first choice for mayor,' Mamdani said in a statement.
Lander's camp, meanwhile, expressed gratitude for the second-place nod.
'This is now a clear three-person race, and Brad is the only candidate with the bod progressive vision, the record and chops to actually get it done,' spokesperson Dora Pekec said in a statement.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
San Francisco Chronicle
an hour ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
California AG says federal cuts are actually helping legal fight with Trump: ‘They can't keep up'
WASHINGTON — Democratic attorneys general fighting the Trump administration on an array of policy issues are seizing on the widespread cuts and resignations of federal employees, an effort that may be coming back to bite the White House. California Attorney General Rob Bonta, buoyed by $25 million from a special legislative session, has been hiring new staff — including some of those former federal employees, he told the Chronicle while in Washington, D.C., to hear Supreme Court arguments in a case the state is party to. While Bonta and other state attorneys have been strategically preparing for prolonged legal battles against the administration, federal cuts have left the U.S. Justice Department without enough staff to handle its workload. More than half the attorneys at the Justice Department's civil rights division, led by San Francisco attorney Harmeet Dhillon, have left, the Wall Street Journal reported. And in some cases, Bonta said, U.S. attorneys — district prosecutors — have appeared on the Trump administration's behalf instead of lawyers from the main Justice Department. 'Their own strategy of 'flood the zone' — and the confusion and chaos and shock and awe — has almost this boomerang effect, where we've responded and the ball's back in their court now and they can't keep up,' Bonta said. 'This speed and this volume has repercussions on their ability to defend themselves.' During the first Trump administration, then-California Attorney General Xavier Becerra brought or was party to 110 cases, according to a CalMatters database. The state won 82% of the 28 cases that reached a final verdict. This go-round, Bonta has already brought or is party to 22 cases and won injunctions against the administration in nine. The volume of cases is 'double the speed, double the pace,' compared to the first Trump administration, Bonta said. At the current rate, 'we will hit the number of total cases of Trump 1.0 by the (2026) midterms.' 'We're doing everything faster and with more volume in a broader variety of cases, more nuance, more issues,' he said. 'So we're just more proficient at it … including working together and filing more quickly, being more responsive to the actions.' That includes coordination among state attorneys. 'More bodies and more talent is going to help us. We've learned as Democratic AGs how to marshal resources together and share those resources, and deploy them strategically and efficiently,' Bonta said. The first Trump administration was a period of discovery for state attorneys general, who were figuring out how they could use their authority, he said. This time, the top state lawyers were more prepared and began sharing resources over a year before Trump took office. During the first month of Trump's current term, 23 Democratic state attorneys general held a daily video chat to coordinate their efforts, Politico reported. They strategized over which courts to file cases, whether to seek state or federal venues and how to prove sufficient harm to be heard in court. Bonta told Politico he preemptively drafted challenges to potential actions from a second Trump administration, particularly focusing on ideas from Project 2025. Although the final verdict in many of these cases could come from the Supreme Court, whose 6-3 conservative majority includes three Trump appointees, Bonta appeared confident that the state would prevail in several key cases. The state has primarily faced pushback on jurisdictional issues. A U.S. District Court judge hearing the state's challenge to Trump's tariffs suggested it should be heard in the U.S. Court of International Trade instead. In the state's suit over the termination of teacher preparation grants, the Supreme Court ruled that the case was a contractual dispute and needed to be heard in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims rather than a District Court. UC Davis law professor Aaron Tang argued that ruling was effectively the Supreme Court trying to give Trump a win, without actually letting him win by not ruling on the merits of the case. Bonta said the cases that pose the biggest financial risk to California involve the administration's massive import tariffs and its efforts to withhold congressionally appropriated funding from states — which make up about half of the cases he has brought. Trump's proposed tariffs would be 'massively damaging,' to California, he said. 'We're the largest state — nearly 40 million people — fourth largest economy in the world now, largest importer of any state, second largest exporter, biggest manufacturer, largest agricultural exporter,' Bonta said. 'An outsized economy means an outsized impact on California of the tariffs.' Federal funding freezes or cuts are also of huge concern, Bonta said. The second case he brought was against the administration's efforts to freeze all federal grant funding, which would have left a $168 billion gap in California's budget, at a time when the state is facing an enormous deficit. The two cases Bonta said pose the biggest social risks are the administration's effort to revoke birthright citizenship — which was the reason Bonta had traveled to Washington, D.C. — and to force states to require proof of citizenship to vote while prohibiting states from counting ballots received after election day. He said he's confident the states will win the birthright citizenship case because 'it's a deprivation of a constitutional right by our own federal government, and it's so clear and so blatant.'
Chicago Tribune
3 hours ago
- Chicago Tribune
Clarence Page: Hey, men, Democrats want your votes. They really do.
Where are the Democrats? What are they doing about the damage President Donald Trump is doing to … everything? I hear that a lot from my liberal friends these days, ever since Trump swept the battleground states six months ago and proceeded to dismantle government as we Americans used to know it. With the fury of a man who is trying to make up for the time he lost on the sidelines after losing to Democrat Joe Biden, Trump has been rolling out radical changes almost daily that seem to be aimed at retribution — one of his favorite words — more than decent governance. In the face of the onslaught, Democrats sound about as depressed as the party's approval ratings — 27% in a recent NBC News poll. That's the party's lowest positive rating in the network's polling data since 1990. Only 7% say their support is 'very positive.' Throwing more salt into their wounds is the simmering discontent among the party's core constituencies, upon whom the party has come to count for decades: young people, Black voters and Latinos, in particular. Trump made notable gains with these voters, a trend that — unlike 2016 — included Trump's winning the popular vote for the first time. Self-identified Democratic voters say by a 2-to-1 margin in the NBC poll that they would rather see their party 'hold the line on their positions, even if it leads to gridlock,' instead of looking for areas of compromise to, as the old Capitol Hill saying goes, get things done. As a self-described moderate liberal, I'm dismayed but not surprised by that angst-driven reaction. Trump's slash-and-burn approach to reform — on issues as varied as immigration enforcement to Medicaid to Veterans Affairs and COVID-19 shots, just for starters, will take a strong pushback just to land somewhere near the ever-elusive sensible center. Where are the Dems now? Of particular interest this time around, the party is trying to woo young men — diligently. The harsh Democratic reality includes downward long-term trends for Democrats while Republicans have been gaining ground in recent decades, particularly among noncollege graduates. Working-class voters have been turning away from the Democrats, long viewed as the party for working families but increasingly perceived as the party of college-educated 'elites.' Which leads us to the most significant new moves by the Dems' donor class and strategists: a $20 million 'strategic plan' called 'Speaking with American Men,' or SAM for short. That's right, guys. Like an old Uncle Sam poster, today's Democrats want you! Perhaps more than ever. The decline of men and concomitant rise of women in Democratic voting ranks has been observed for decades and is not expected to change drastically soon. Democratic pollsters are advising the party leaders to avoid taking the wrong lessons from the 2026 midterms, when many of them hope President Trump's excesses will backfire in favor of the Dems. That's wise. Trump's successes, including his victory last year, have tended to be larger than expected after the Democrats underestimated his popularity. As Anat Shenker-Osorio, a Democratic consultant told The New York Times, 'Voters are hungry for people to actually stand up for them — or get caught trying.' In other words, she said, 'The party is doing a lot of naval-gazing and not enough full-belly aching.' I, too, have heard that lament, particularly from Democrats in cities like Chicago who remember an era when the party seemed less concerned with trying to sound polite and more concerned with delivering the goods to its constituents. That's especially important at times like these when funding cuts for research, veterans and health care, among other issues, can mean life and death for them. Scott Galloway, a marketing professor at NYU and a prominent commentator, has gained a measure of fame for his speeches and research on the feeling of abandonment by the Dems that has been a major turnoff for the audience of the so-called 'Manosphere' of male podcasting. He argues that the party's focus on other demographics, like women voters, is important, but has fed a feeling of neglect and abandonment among young men. This development caught little attention in the era before podcasting. But today's electorate, like the news, is not what it used to be. Democrats will have to keep up with changing times before the party's candidates are overwhelmed by them.
Los Angeles Times
3 hours ago
- Los Angeles Times
Was Le Slap a love tap or an assault? France's first couple offer a distraction from bad news
Not that you asked, but yes, I have been feeling a bit overwhelmed by all the bad news out of Washington: Pardons for tax cheats who line President Trump's pockets. Talk of pardons for the violent criminals who conspired to kidnap and kill Democratic Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. Dinners for crypto moguls who shower him with money. His monomaniacal quest to extinguish the light of the country's most prestigious university. His budget that will deprive millions of their healthcare coverage, while slashing taxes for the rich and swelling the $36 trillion national debt by an estimated $3.8 trillion. And don't get me started on Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s inane move that could make it harder for pregnant women to get COVID-19 shots, thus depriving their infants of protection against the virus when they are vulnerable and not yet eligible for vaccination. Good heavens, I needed a distraction. Happily, it arrived in the form of an unexpected video. You may have seen it: Last Sunday, French President Emmanuel Macron's wife, Brigitte, got tongues wagging when she did something that seemed entirely out of character for the painfully elegant first lady. She was caught on camera squishing her hands right into his handsome face. It looked like an act of hostility. I was intrigued. I know, I know. It's hardly world-shattering news. But who doesn't perk up a bit when the scrim of perfection that shields the private lives of high-profile, perfectly turned-out couples is torn, even for one brief moment? Who can forget the sight of First Lady Melania Trump swatting away her husband's hand during a 2017 visit to Tel Aviv? Or the way her smile faded during his first inauguration the moment he looked away from her, inspiring the #FreeMelania hashtag? For all the drama and rumor that swirled around the Clintons' marriage, I can't think of any public moment when they did not appear civil with one another, even after his disastrous relationship with a White House intern. And the Obamas? Is there any other intensely scrutinized political couple who seem so downright normal? Not that anyone ever really knows what's going on in anyone else's marriage. Which brings us back to the Macrons. His plane was on the tarmac in Hanoi, where he was kicking off a tour to strengthen ties with countries in Southeast Asia. As the plane door opened, the couple were caught unawares. A startled-looking Macron backed up as disembodied hands smushed his face. He instantly collected himself, and his wife appeared at his side. As they began to descend the staircase, he offered her his arm, which she did not take. The bizarre clip went viral, and sent the French government, known as the Élysée Palace, into what one headline described as 'chaos.' Part of the chaos stemmed from the government first claiming that the clip was not real but was possibly a deep fake created by AI and exploited by Russia to make Macron seem weak. After the Associated Press authenticated the video, the French government changed its tune, describing the moment as merely a playful interaction between the couple. Unsurprisingly, given their back story, the Macrons have been the subject of intense fascination for years. They met in 1993 at a Catholic high school in northern France when he was 15. She, nearly 40 at the time, and a married mother of three, was his drama teacher. His parents were so concerned about the impropriety of their relationship that they sent him away to Paris for his senior year. In 2006, she divorced her husband, and married Macron the following year. He was 29. She was 54. 'Of course, we have breakfast together, me and my wrinkles, him with his youth, but it's like that,' Macron told Elle France in 2017. 'If I did not make that choice, I would have missed out on my life.' Unfortunately, Le Slapgate threatened to overshadow the Macrons' trip. 'We are squabbling and, rather, joking with my wife,' he told reporters, complaining that the incident was being overblown into 'a sort of geo-planetary catastrophe.' A few days later, though, he was making light of the incident. Or at least trying to. On Tuesday in Jakarta, Indonesia, as his plane door opened, another disembodied hand appeared, this time waving before Macron stepped into the camera frame smiling before he walked down the stairs arm in arm with his wife. Ha ha. For a brief moment, the squabbling of one of the world's most interesting couples gave us a much needed break from the actual geo-planetary catastrophe unfolding around us. For that, the Macrons have my gratitude. Merci, you crazy lovebirds. @ @rabcarian
