Independent mayoral candidate Jim Walden is calling on “free market candidates” in the 2025 New York City mayoral election to pledge to coalesce behind one candidate in the hope of defeating Assembly 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 independent candidate Mayor Eric Adams, Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa, and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo — who is reportedly still deciding whether to run a campaign but whose name will appear on the ballot in November — to pledge to back a single candidate other than Mamdani in the fall.
According to Walden’s pitch, the single candidate would be decided by a “rigorous, independent poll conducted weeks before the race.”
“Socialism represents an existential risk to the city—politically, financially, and morally,” Walden said in a Thursday statement announcing the pledge. “Defeating socialism is now central to this mayoral campaign.”
Mamdani’s plans to freeze rent, open city-owned grocery stores, and make public buses free to ride have ruffled feathers in the Democratic establishment and heightened concerns among independents and Republicans. Though some centrist Democrats have shown hesitancy to back his campaign, which unexpectedly cruised to sweeping victory on Primary Day, Mamdani is steadily accumulating support from Democratic officials across the city and earning the support of major unions.
A page out of Mamdani playbook
For Walden and other anti-socialist candidates and politicians, Mamdani’s ability to gain the cross-endorsements of his primary opponents under ranked-choice voting is a strategy that should be noted by opponents to the democratic socialist’s politics.
“The proposal takes a page from the Democratic primary, where candidates cross-endorsed before the vote to ensure that Zohran Mamdani would defeat Andrew Cuomo, effectively engineering a socialist victory,” the Walden campaign explained in a Thursday news release.
The November general election, however, is not a ranked-choice contest. Voters will only get to choose one candidate from the field.
Though Mamdani beat Cuomo handily in the Democratic mayoral primary, the Assembly Member’s cross-endorsement with progressive City Comptroller Brad Lander in the final weeks of the campaign helped push him to victory as the two decided to prioritize keeping Cuomo out of City Hall.
Under Walden’s proposal, the “free market” candidates who do not perform well enough in the poll would “endorse the winner and suspend their campaigns” — a move that would require approval from the NYC Campaign Finance Board in order to ensure candidates suspending their campaigns pay back any necessary public funds they have been granted. Walden’s campaign claimed in its news release that the board “did not apply this rule to the Democrats in the primary.”
Campaign Finance Board Director of Public Relations Amy Lebowitz wrote in a statement to amNewYork 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 passed by the board earlier this year.
The Adams, Cuomo, and Sliwa campaigns did not immediately respond to requests for comment about whether they would consider the pledge.
The Mamdani campaign also did not immediately respond to request for comment.
Independent and Republican candidates have already faced pressure to coalition-build behind a singular candidate in the interest of beating Mamdani. Sliwa, in response to calls from Republicans to drop out and back Adams, told Politico the only way he’s leaving the race is “in a pine box.”
On Thursday, billionaire Bill Ackman called on Cuomo to officially step down from the race and back Adams.
A poll conducted by the Honan Strategy Group in the immediate aftermath of Mamdani’s apparent victory last week shows the Assembly member winning the race to City Hall if Cuomo stays out, but shows the Democratic nominee neck-and-neck with the former governor if Cuomo chooses to run a campaign.
In an Emerson College poll published in May, the results show a hypothetical matchup between Mamdani, Adams, Sliwa, and Walden swinging well in Mamdani’s favor, with Walden coming in last.
