New York lawyer and mayoral candidate Jim Walden is looking on “free-market candidates” to coalesce to defeat Zohran Mamdani within the fall.
Courtesy of Jim Walden
Impartial mayoral candidate Jim Walden is looking on “free market candidates” within the 2025 New York Metropolis mayoral election to pledge to coalesce behind one candidate within the hope of defeating Meeting Member Zohran Mamdani (D-Queens), a democratic socialist who this week clinched the Democratic nomination for mayor.
The “Pledge for Our Free Market” calls on unbiased candidate Mayor Eric Adams, Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa, and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo — who’s reportedly nonetheless deciding whether or not to run a marketing campaign however whose identify will seem on the poll in November — to pledge to again a single candidate apart from Mamdani within the fall.
Based on Walden’s pitch, the only candidate can be determined by a “rigorous, independent poll conducted weeks before the race.”
“Socialism represents an existential risk to the city—politically, financially, and morally,” Walden mentioned in a Thursday assertion saying the pledge. “Defeating socialism is now central to this mayoral campaign.”
Mamdani’s plans to freeze hire, open city-owned grocery shops, and make public buses free to experience have ruffled feathers within the Democratic institution and heightened issues amongst independents and Republicans. Although some centrist Democrats have proven hesitancy to again his marketing campaign, which unexpectedly cruised to sweeping victory on Main Day, Mamdani is steadily accumulating assist from Democratic officers throughout the town and incomes the assist of main unions.
A web page out of Mamdani playbook
Meeting Member and presumptive Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani. Tuesday, June 24, 2025.Photograph By Dean Moses
For Walden and different anti-socialist candidates and politicians, Mamdani’s capacity to realize the cross-endorsements of his major opponents below ranked-choice voting is a method that needs to be famous by opponents to the democratic socialist’s politics.
The November common election, nevertheless, just isn’t a ranked-choice contest. Voters will solely get to decide on one candidate from the sphere.
Although Mamdani beat Cuomo handily within the Democratic mayoral major, the Meeting Member’s cross-endorsement with progressive Metropolis Comptroller Brad Lander within the last weeks of the marketing campaign helped push him to victory as the 2 determined to prioritize protecting Cuomo out of Metropolis Corridor.
Marketing campaign Finance Board Director of Public Relations Amy Lebowitz wrote in a press release to New York News that “in a Ranked Choice Voting election, candidates may cross-endorse other candidates as long as they are also promoting their own candidacy,” pointing to an advisory opinion handed by the board earlier this 12 months.
The Adams, Cuomo, and Sliwa campaigns didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark about whether or not they would think about the pledge.
The Mamdani marketing campaign additionally didn’t instantly reply to request for remark.
Impartial and Republican candidates have already confronted stress to coalition-build behind a singular candidate within the curiosity of beating Mamdani. Sliwa, in response to calls from Republicans to drop out and again Adams, instructed Politico the one method he’s leaving the race is “in a pine box.”
On Thursday, billionaire Invoice Ackman referred to as on Cuomo to formally step down from the race and again Adams.
A ballot carried out by the Honan Technique Group within the fast aftermath of Mamdani’s obvious victory final week reveals the Meeting member successful the race to Metropolis Corridor if Cuomo stays out, however reveals the Democratic nominee neck-and-neck with the previous governor if Cuomo chooses to run a marketing campaign.
In an Emerson School ballot printed in Could, the outcomes present a hypothetical matchup between Mamdani, Adams, Sliwa, and Walden swinging effectively in Mamdani’s favor, with Walden coming in final.
