January 2, 2025

By David Freedlander

Photo-Illustration: Joe Darrow; Photo: Getty Images, Reuters, AP Photo, Alamy

The race to be the next mayor of New York City kicked off on a Saturday morning in the South Bronx. It was late October, ten days before a presidential election that was by universal claim one with apocalyptic stakes, but that didn’t stop five of the major declared contenders seeking to succeed Eric Adams from going to the Bronx Christian Charismatic Prayer Fellowship, a ramshackle house of worship on Morris Avenue, to make their pitch. There was hardly anyone in the pews save for a couple of reporters and a handful of early-hire campaign hands. A teen brother-sister hip-hop duo performed. Kirsten John Foy, a rabble-rousing activist and the host of the forum, gave an introduction that served as an oblique warning to the two biggest players in the race, neither of whom were onstage that morning: Mayor Eric Adams, he of the five-count criminal indictment and the submergent approval rating, and former governor Andrew Cuomo, who had been quietly indulging a will-he-or-won’t-he comeback attempt after resigning from office in a sexual-harassment scandal.

Required Reading for Political Compulsives

ADVERTISER CONTENT

ADVERTISER CONTENT

A week-in-review newsletter from the people who make New York Magazine. Sign up to get it every Saturday.