Andrew Yang has a double-digit lead over his two closest competitors in the race for the Democratic Party nomination for New York City mayor, according to a new poll.
With 28 per cent support, the tech entrepreneur and former presidential candidate leads the pack in a crowded field of hopefuls vying to succeed outgoing Mayor Bill de Blasio.
Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams and City Comptroller Scott Stringer placed in second and third place, respectively, and appear to be the only candidates with a realistic chance of closing the gap, according to Politico.
Adams received 17 per cent of the vote while Stringer garnered 13 per cent support, according to the online survey conducted by Core Decision Analytics.
The poll surveyed 842 Democratic Party voters online from January 20 through January 25.
Andrew Yang is the frontrunner in the race for the Democratic Party nomination for mayor of New York City, according to a new poll. Yang is seen above announcing his candidacy in Manhattan on January 14
Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams (left) and City Comptroller Scott Stringer (right) placed in second and third place, respectively, and appear to be the only candidates with a realistic chance of closing the gap
Both party primaries are scheduled for June 22.
There are dozens of candidates running from both parties, though it is widely accepted as a foregone conclusion that the winner of the Democratic primary will easily capture the mayoralty in liberal-dominated New York City.
According to the survey, Yang is helped by the name recognition he earned after his longshot presidential campaign for the Democratic nomination.
He maintains a lead even after he was criticized last month for spending much of his time outside New York City since the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
Since the lockdowns were imposed last spring, Yang has bounced back and forth between his Hell’s Kitchen apartment to his $500,000 weekend home in New Paltz, New York, which is about 80 miles outside Manhattan.
During an interview with the New York Times last month, Yang, who has an autistic son, talked about fulfilling his duties as a CNN commentator from his apartment amid the pandemic.
‘We live in a two-bedroom apartment in Manhattan. And so, like, can you imagine trying to have two kids on virtual school in a two-bedroom apartment, and then trying to do work yourself?’
That prompted several people, including parents, who go through this on a daily basis, to blast the former presidential candidate for his ‘tone deaf’ remarks.
But the controversy doesn’t appear to have hurt him in the eyes of potential Democratic Party voters.
An overwhelming majority of those polled – 84 per cent – said they knew who Yang was, compared to just 60 per cent for Adams and 66 per cent for Stringer.
Adams, 60, has held elected office in New York State since 2006. Stringer, also 60, was first elected to the New York State Assembly in 1992. He was also Manhattan borough president before being elected city comptroller in 2013.
Other candidates are languishing in single digits as voters who were polled said that they did not know who they were.
Maya Wiley (left), an attorney and former aide to de Blasio who left her role as a pundit for cable news channel MSNBC in order to run for mayor, gets just 8 per cent in the latest poll. She had just 33 per cent name recognition. Tied with Wiley at 8 per cent is Shaun Donovan (right), who served as former President Barack Obama’s secretary at the Department of Housing and Urban Development
Maya Wiley, an attorney and former aide to de Blasio who left her role as a pundit for cable news channel MSNBC in order to run for mayor, gets just 8 per cent in the latest poll. She had just 33 per cent name recognition.
Tied with Wiley at 8 per cent is Shaun Donovan, who served as former President Barack Obama’s secretary at the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Donovan was also commissioner of New York City’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development under the administration of then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
Dianna Morales, Kathryn Garcia, and Ray McGuire each polled at 2 per cent.
Morales, 53, was CEO of a Bronx social services non-profit called Phipps Neighborhoods until she stepped down to run for mayor.
The Harvard grad supports defunding the police and is running on a progressive platform.
Garcia, 50, served as the 43rd Commissioner of the New York City Sanitation Department from 2014 to 2020.
She previously held roles as the chief operating officer of the New York City Department of Environmental Protection and the interim chair and chief executive officer of the New York City Housing Authority.
McGuire, 64, is a businessman and former executive at Citigroup.
He holds an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School and a Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School and is campaigning on a pledge to fix the economy and end racial unrest.
Kathryn Garcia (left) and Dianna Morales (right) are both tied at 2 per cent, according to the poll
Ray McGuire, 64, is a businessman and former executive at Citigroup. He also has just 2 per cent support, according to the poll
McGuire’s former career as a finance executive appears to be a turn-off for voters as 32 per cent of those surveyed said they would not vote for him.
Knowing that the former president remains popular with progressives, Donovan regularly brings up his time working in the Obama administration, though he does not mention his time serving Bloomberg, who is unpopular.
When asked which issues are most important to them, 30 per cent said vaccine distribution was top of the list.
Nineteen per cent of those polled said the most critical issue facing New York City is reopening the economy while 16 per cent said crime and safety.
Of those polled, just 6 per cent said police reform was the most critical issue facing the city – a far cry from last spring, when protests and demonstrations in the aftermath of the George Floyd killing were roiling the country.
Ivy League son of Taiwanese immigrants who wanted to ‘Make America think harder’ is poised to conquer New York’s City Hall
Andrew Yang is trying to become the first-ever Asian-American mayor of New York City
Andrew M. Yang, 46, was born in Schenectady, New York in 1975.
Yang’s parents are Taiwanese immigrants.
He said he was a ‘nerdy Asian kid’ who skipped a grade in school and was especially scrawny. He was called racial epithets and got in a lot of fights, ‘which I generally lost.’
After college at Brown University and law school at Columbia, Yang worked in the tech industry before starting a nonprofit that provided money to entrepreneurs.
His first successful business endeavor was Stargiving.com, a website he launched in 2000 to facilitate charitable donations from celebrities.
In 2002, he was named vice president of the healthcare software startup MMF Systems, where he served for three years.
In 2006, Yang founded Manhattan Prep, an educational test preparation startup where he served as CEO and president until 2011.
The company was a success, expanding to dozens of locations that specialized in helping students prepare for the GMAT exam.
In 2009, Manhattan Prep was acquired by the Kaplan company, making Yang a millionaire. Yang stepped down from helming Manhattan Prep in 2012.
In 2011, he founded Venture for America, a nonprofit that trains college graduates and young professionals to work for startup firms in cities such as Baltimore, Detroit, Pittsburgh, and Cleveland.
In 2012, then-President Barack Obama recognized Yang with the Champion of Change award. Three years later, Obama named Yang a presidential ambassador for global entrepreneurship.
Yang is the author of two books – both aimed at shrinking income inequality in America.
During Yang’s recent presidential campaign, he generated buzz thanks to a devoted following from supporters who called themselves the ‘Yang Gang’. Yang is seen above crowdsurfing during a campaign event in Costa Mesa, California in September 2019
In 2014, he wrote Smart People Should Build Things in 2014 and The War on Normal People: The Truth About America’s Disappearing Jobs.
Four years later, he authored Why Universal Basic Income Is Our Future.
As he became focused on the toll of automation, he decided the best and necessary policy solution was a universal basic income. He decided that the fastest way to promote the ideas was ‘to run for president and win.’
He created buzz for his presidential campaign by talking about his love of math and championing a universal basic income that would give every American adult $1,000 per month.
Yang gave campaign speeches full of statistics and studies that often resembled an economics seminar.
His supporters, known as the Yang Gang, donned blue hats and pins with the word MATH – short for his slogan Make America Think Harder.
Yang was one of the early breakout stars of the Democratic primary race, building a following that started largely online but expanded to give him enough donors and polling numbers to qualify for the first six debates.
He outlasted senators and governors, and after initially self-funding his campaign, he raised more money than most of his rivals, bringing in over $16million in the final quarter of 2019.
It was a bigger haul than all but the top four candidates: Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders; former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg; the eventual winner, President Joe Biden; and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren.
Yang’s poll numbers were high enough, combined with his fundraising strength, to qualify him for all of the 2019 debates, though he fell short of Democratic National Committee’s qualifications to participate in the January 2020 debate in Iowa.
Yang is a married father of two young children. He is pictured above with his wife, Evelyn, and their two boys in this January 28 file photo
He eventually bowed out of the race before the New Hampshire primary.
After the election, Yang briefly joined CNN as a pundit before announcing his run for mayor of New York City.
If he wins, he will be the first-ever Asian-American mayor of New York.