In an already bizarre NYC mayor’s race, is there any chance of a write-in candidate finding success?

The 2025 New York City mayor’s race has been unusual to say the least.

The sitting Democratic mayor, Eric Adams, is now running as an independent in the general election after skipping the party’s primary. That contest saw 33-year-old democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani soundly defeat former Gov. Andrew Cuomo by nearly 13%.

Like Adams, Cuomo is now running as an independent in the five-way general election, which polls indicate remains Mamdani’s to lose.

How could an already unorthodox election season become even stranger? A new candidate enters the race with a write-in campaign.

State of the race

Mamdani won the June primary by a wide margin, mostly because he energized young and disaffected voters. He has led the field in several recent polls with strong pluralities. Yet, many centrist Democrats have been hesitant to support him due to his socialist branding and proposals to raise taxes on the wealthy, while not feeling satisfied with their other options either.

Cuomo and Adams are highly unpopular with voters and bring plenty of political baggage into the contest. Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa lost his 2021 mayoral bid to Adams by 40 points and is vying to win in a town where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by a 7:1 margin. And independent attorney Jim Walden is polling near zero percent support.

It is too late for any other independent candidates to enter the race, with the May 27 deadline for registering a new line having long passed. So the only path for those unhappy with any of the current options is to mount a coordinated write-in campaign.

Can a write-in candidate win? It worked in Buffalo

While no one has announced a write-in campaign, a yet-unknown candidate could theoretically convince New Yorkers to manually write their name on paper ballots in November as a choice for mayor.

However, election lawyer Sarah Steiner said that while “anybody can write-in anybody on a ballot for any office in New York,” it is “not a meaningful way to approach this election.”

Steiner said people think it can be done because of Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown’s 2021 write-in victory over India Walton, a socialist who won that year’s Democratic primary over Brown, but that was a “unique situation” that is “not really replicable” in New York City.

Brown, a four-term incumbent, secured victory with 59% of the vote after running a spirited campaign — buoyed by his widespread name recognition, ample campaign resources, and support from Republicans.

Brown’s campaign focused on making it easy for voters to remember to write his name on the ballot by using the slogan “write down Byron Brown.” The campaign even spent $100,000 to buy custom rubber stamps with Brown’s name on them so voters could simply stamp his name onto the ballot instead of having to write it.

Brown also benefited from having a short, easy-to-spell name — and from the fact that Walton was the only other candidate on the ballot.

Too many options in November?

Writer and political analyst Michael Lange agreed with Steiner that it would be “very difficult” to pull off a similar feat in the current New York City mayor’s race. He said there are already far too many candidates competing to get the “anti-Zohran vote” and all of them have made clear they are unlikely to drop out and back any of their competitors.

“If there was a real write-in campaign with money behind it, we still would not see Andrew Cuomo, Eric Adams, or Curtis Sliwa all get together in a room and defer to a write-in candidate,” Lange said.

The time to have organized an effective write-in effort would have been in the days immediately following the primary, Lange said, which was nearly a month ago.

“For a write-in to work, you’d need Cuomo to get out, Eric Adams too, probably at the behest of the people who finance him,” Lange said. “The time to strike was in the chaos immediately after Mamdani won. Now, I think too much time has passed and the field is baked in.”

Lange said the only people he could see plausibly mounting a write-in campaign are members of Congress, such as Dan Goldman (D-Manhattan/Brooklyn) or Ritchie Torres (D-Bronx).

One of the challenges in New York is getting high-caliber people to run for what is often called the second-toughest job in America. Other possible write-in candidates could be Kathryn Garcia, Gov. Kathy Hochul’s current director of state operations, who was the runner-up to Adams in the 2021 Democratic primary; Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch; respected financier Ray McGuire; former Bloomberg administration Deputy of Operations Ed Skyler; former president of the state Economic Development Agency and Bloomberg administration alum Eric Gertler; chair of the New York City Partnership Rob Speyer; and former Deputy Borough President Maria Torres-Springer.

Billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, who backed Cuomo in the primary and was casting about for a write-in candidate to take on Mamdani, before backing Adams instead, publicly floated the idea of recruiting a write-in candidate after the primary. He had approached Torres, but was rebuffed, according to a report from New York Magazine.

Steiner, however, said all that introducing a write-in candidate into the field at this point would do is pull votes away from Adams, Cuomo, and Sliwa.

“Who do we add to this mélange of people that captivates everybody and says, ‘yes, this one, this is the one I want’ to take what money to advertise to all of the voters of New York that they should just forget all of these people and go with this person who we would love?” Steiner said. “It sounds like a pipe dream, because it is a pipe dream.”