NEW YORK — Former presidential candidate Andrew Yang is calling elected officials to gauge support for a possible bid to become New York City’s next mayor, according to several people involved in the talks.
Yang, who championed a plan to provide all Americans a $1,000 monthly stipend, is also in talks with Tusk Strategies, the consulting firm that worked on Mike Bloomberg’s 2009 mayoral campaign, the people said.
“It sounds like Andrew Yang is running for mayor and seems excited about his path to win,” said one person who spoke to Yang, who has decamped to Georgia to volunteer for the U.S. Senate races of Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff.
As POLITICO recently reported, Yang’s team conducted a poll testing whether he could succeed as a third-party candidate, but a person familiar with his thinking said he would instead join the crowded field of Democrats vying to win the primary in June 2021.
The New York Post on Tuesday reported that Yang dominated in a Slingshot Strategies survey of 1,000 Democratic voters conducted between Nov. 30 and Dec. 6. The technology entrepreneur was the first choice for 20 percent of respondents, followed by Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams and City Comptroller Scott Stringer, who received 14 percent and 11 percent, respectively.
In a separate question testing the advent of ranked-choice voting — a system of selecting five candidates and ranking them in order of preference — Yang was ranked first by 17 percent of respondents and second by 12 percent, putting him first both times.
Bradley Tusk and Chris Coffey of Tusk Strategies have also been calling elected officials and other New Yorkers to assess support for a Yang candidacy, several people familiar with their outreach said. Coffey declined to comment.
News about Yang’s potential entry into the race riled a rival campaign, who took a swipe at several of Tusk’s former clients — namely the city’s rank-and-file police union, which supported President Donald Trump in his unsuccessful re-election.
“I guess Yang is going to run as the pro-PBA, pro-Uber, anti-labor candidate,” said the person from the rival camp, requesting anonymity. “Good luck in a Democratic primary.”
Stringer announced his campaign in September and former City Hall attorney and MSNBC legal analyst Maya Wiley rolled out her first bid for office the following month. Shaun Donovan, who worked in the Obama White House and Bloomberg mayoral administration, launched his bid Tuesday.
Former City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who lost the mayor’s race in 2013, is said to be eyeing a run for either mayor or comptroller next year, and Max Rose, who just lost his Congressional seat to a Republican on Staten Island, is gearing up for his own likely entrance into the race, according to people familiar with their plans.
