Civil rights activist Maya Wiley to announce bid for NYC mayor tomorrow

Maya Wiley, the former chair of the Civilian Complaint Review Board, plans to announce her candidacy for New York City mayor outside the Brooklyn Museum on Thursday, which will make her the second candidate to officially enter the ring.

The self-ascribed civil rights activist says she plans to bring an entirely new element to City Hall in 2021 if she gets elected and will go up against city Comptroller Scott Stringer, who announced last month, once Mayor Bill de Blasio’s second term is up.

“I am not a conventional candidate, but changing it up is not the risk. Electing the same kinds of people bringing the same broken promises over and over again and expecting things will be different; that’s the risk we can’t afford right now,” Wiley said in a new campaign video. “Not with 24,000 of our neighbors, friends, family members losing their lives to this pandemic… And not with a crisis of confidence in our city’s leadership.”

According to Wiley’s campaign, support will come from across the five boroughs and will include Queens state Senator Michael Gianaris, famous for his role in tipping the vote against Amazon’s HQ2 project from his seat on the Public Authorities Control Board.

Wiley plans to campaign on a platform seeking to alleviate the effects of the recent economic downturn due to COVID-19, seeking racial justice, the perennial issue of the lack of affordable housing as well as reforming what she sees as an “unequal education system.”

Having once served as a legal counsel to de Blasio in 2014, Wiley has also held down a role in the Civil Division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York as well as at the NAACP.

In July, the New York Times reported that Wiley would be leaving her role as a contributor for MSNBC and NBC News to weigh a potential run for mayor. When asked on MSNBC if she was announcing her candidacy, her computer froze during the broadcast.

In September it was revealed that Wiley had formed a campaign committee and was raising money, which she now says is eligible for the matching funds program through the city’s Campaign Finance Board. For every dollar donated to her campaign, the city will contribute up to eight, the surplus of which would have to be returned to the CFB.

At 56 years old, Wiley was born in Washington D.C. and now lives in Brooklyn.