No love for the current mayor or former governor at Bronx mayoral forum

NEW YORK — Every Democratic candidate hoping to occupy Gracie Mansion in 2026 attended a mayoral candidate forum in the Bronx on Saturday — except the current resident.

A seat for Mayor Eric Adams remained empty on the stage, as five challengers took turns teeing off on the indicted incumbent at the first such forum of the 2025 cycle.

“We have a city that is on the precipice in many ways and we are at a crossroads,” said Kirsten John Foy, emcee at the Christian Charismatic Prayer Fellowship, which hosted the event. “If it’s too inconvenient for you to show up in the Bronx today, maybe it’ll be too inconvenient for the voters to show up on Election Day.”

Each candidate seemed more concerned with Adams’ tenure than their competitors.

“The whole point of electing a Democratic mayor was that we were going to get closer to universal childcare and continue to work backwards until we get to newborns,” said State Sen. Jessica Ramos. With her two sons in the audience, Ramos said she wants to, “fight like a mother to get this city in order.”

“If you’re a friend at City Hall, you [are] making bank, and that has to change,” said former city Comptroller Scott Stringer. He appeared to be referring to the mushrooming scandals and city and federal probes engulfing the Adams administration.

Stringer also criticized the mayor’s handling of the city’s migrants, saying Adams, “basically takes the Trump talking points, flips the bird at the president of the United States, and the president of the United States said ‘Really? I’m 87 years old. You don’t talk to me like that … so you’re cut off.’”

Adams has criticized his fellow Democrat, President Joe Biden, for failing to adequately fund New York’s expenses as it accommodates tens of thousands of migrants since 2022.

A spokesperson for City Hall did not respond to a request for comment.

Affordability, public safety and transportation dominated most candidates’ speeches.

Queens State Sen. Zohran Mamdani invoked both when mapping his plan to fund free city buses through increased taxes on the wealthy — touting the success of his pilot program that eliminated fares on one bus in each borough, including Bx18-A in the Bronx.

“What we found is that when you make a bus free, you make it a safer bus. Across the city, assaults on bus operators on those free buses dropped by nearly 40 percent. In the Bronx, Bx18A, more than 70 percent drop in assaults,” Mamdani said. “So if you are serious about public safety, we have to be serious about every way we can get there.”

The candidates all noted the importance of delivering city-funded child care and after school programs, especially to low-income communities.

City Comptroller Brad Lander said universal after school care can “be a place not only for what working families need —child care until 6 or until the end of the day — but also the hours and the space and the resources that we need to provide our young people with access to a whole set of things we don’t give them during the school day: more sports and arts, and social and emotional supports, and internships and job pathways and financial literacy.”

Looming over the event was the absence of another New York politician — one who has yet to declare his formal bid in the mayoral race.

“There’s some people who want to use this as an opportunity to vindicate themselves, because they felt that something happened to them unfairly in their last job. Or they see an opportunity to be politically predatory,” said Foy, seemingly alluding to former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who’s been considering a run for mayor.

Cuomo resigned from the governorship after a report found he sexually harassed 11 women, which he denies.

“We’ve had a lot of promises over the past year, past couple years, past couple decades — people that have been in positions of leadership, who have made promises to us, and we are still here today,” said state Sen. Zellnor Myrie, seemingly alluding to Cuomo and others. “Show me. Show me how you have served.”

Rich Azzopardi, a Cuomo representative, told POLITICO that he did not watch the forum, but saw a few tweets about it and had a statement ready.

“This is all premature, but New Yorkers know it was Governor Cuomo who got marriage equality legalized, Roe v. Wade enshrined into state law, put the strongest gun protections and paid family leave laws in the nation on the books, put a $15 minimum wage in place, and make CUNY tuition free for the middle class, and built projects previously declared impossible, such as the Moynihan train station, the new LaGuardia and JFK airports, the Second Avenue subway and the Kosciuszko Bridge, all while cutting taxes and reining in spending,” he said.

After the five candidates finished speaking, Public Advocate Jumaane Williams took the dais. He was introduced as the man who would take over as mayor, should Adams resign or get removed by Gov. Kathy Hochul.

“Andrew Cuomo would be a very bad person to elect mayor of the city of New York,” Williams said. “Like Donald Trump, he is a master at using peoples’ trauma against them, and so be very careful when he’s saying something that you may identify with — it’s a very dangerous skill set he has. … I think most of the folks who are running would agree with that.”