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      An Actor, a Bookseller and a Chef Walk Into a Voting Booth

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      We asked scores of well-known New Yorkers from a broad spectrum of the city to give us their ranked-choice ballots for mayor. Here’s what some told us.Graydon Carter, the longtime chronicler of New York City’s glamorous set, is just looking for “somebody who can make the pipes work.”Sarah McNally, one of the city’s top booksellers, said her employees would “hate” whom she was ranking first.And Sonia Manzano, who spent 44 years on “Sesame Street” as Maria, understands her candidate has no charisma. That’s just the way she likes it.With the June 24 Democratic primary just days away, the race for mayor has consumed New Yorkers and divided them into camps. Our famous neighbors, it turns out, are no exception.The New York Times asked dozens of them to share their ranked-choice ballots. The results are not scientific and they diverge from polls of likely primary voters. But they illuminate how some of the people who write Broadway hits, run celebrated kitchens, fill television screens and shape the skyline view the city’s challenges and the crop of 11 Democrats vying to lead it.Many chose not to tip their hands, invoking the principle of the secret ballot, or another sacrosanct New York rule: Do not risk offending the powerful.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      In Final Push for Mayor, Lander Appears With 2 Cuomo Accusers

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      The campaign event by Brad Lander, the New York City comptroller running for mayor, came as Andrew Cuomo, the front-runner, appeared with the mother of a murder victim.On the last Saturday before Democratic voters pick their standard-bearer in the New York City mayor’s race, former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo stood with the mother of a teenager murdered with knives and machetes in a 2018 act of violence that shocked the city.“One of the top priorities has to be public safety,” said Mr. Cuomo, who has promised to add 5,000 more officers to the police force. “If people don’t feel safe in the city, nothing else really matters.”He spoke in front of signs displaying years-old social media posts from his chief rival, Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, that called for the defunding of the police, a stance he no longer holds.Earlier that day, Mr. Mamdani, a 33-year-old democratic socialist, rebounded from a Saturday night, seven-and-a-half-hour, top-to-bottom hike of Manhattan with a rally in Sunnyside, Queens.And, in Manhattan, was Comptroller Brad Lander, whose mayoral campaign gained national attention after federal agents arrested him while he was accompanying a migrant at immigration court last week. At his “closing argument” for the mayoralty in the voter-rich precincts of Manhattan’s Upper West Side, Mr. Lander sought further attention by inviting the first two women to accuse Mr. Cuomo of sexual harassment.Their accusations, which Mr. Cuomo denies, set the stage for other women to come forward, ultimately prompting his 2021 resignation from office. A supporter held up a sign that read “Don’t Rank Creepy Cuomo.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Nathan Silver, Who Chronicled a Vanished New York, Dies at 89

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      An architect, he wrote in his book “Lost New York” about the many buildings that were destroyed before passage of the city’s landmarks preservation law.Nathan Silver, an architect whose elegiac 1967 book, “Lost New York,” offered a history lesson about the many buildings that were demolished before the city passed a landmarks preservation law that might have offered protection from the wrecking ball, died on May 19 in London. He was 89.His brother, Robert, who is also an architect, said that he died in a hospital after a fall and subsequent surgery to repair a torn knee ligament.Mr. Silver’s book — an outgrowth of an exhibition that he curated in 1964 while he was teaching at Columbia University’s architecture school — was an indispensable photographic guide to what had vanished over many decades. It was published as the city’s long-percolating preservation movement was working to prevent other worthy structures from being destroyed.“By 1963, it seemed urgent to make some sort of plea for architectural preservation in New York City,” he wrote. “It had been announced that Pennsylvania Station would be razed, a final solution seemed likely for the 39th Street Metropolitan Opera” — it was destroyed in 1967 — “and the commercial buildings of Worth Street were being pounded into landfill for a parking lot.”He added, “While cities must adapt if they are to remain responsive to the needs and wishes of their inhabitants, they need not change in a heedless and suicidal fashion.”He found images in archives of “first-rate architecture” that no longer existed, including a post office near City Hall; Madison Square Garden, at Madison Avenue and 26th Street; the art collector Richard Canfield’s gambling house, on 44th Street near Fifth Avenue; the 47-story Singer Tower, at Broadway and Liberty Street; the Produce Exchange, at Beaver Street and Bowling Green; and the Ziegfeld Theater, at 54th Street and Sixth Avenue.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Police Investigate Threats to Mamdani in Mayoral Race’s Final Days

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      Voice mail messages promising violence against Zohran Mamdani, a progressive Democrat, came as attacks on politicians, judges and other government officials have skyrocketed.The New York Police Department is investigating threats against Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, one of the leading candidates in the city’s Democratic mayoral primary.Andrew Epstein, a spokesman for Mr. Mamdani, said he was cooperating with the department’s Hate Crimes Task Force after an unidentified man left a string of profane voice mail messages at his district office in recent weeks. One message left Wednesday morning threatened Mr. Mamdani, who is Muslim, and his family.The man called Mr. Mamdani a “terrorist” who “is not welcome in New York or America,” according to audio provided by the campaign. Although Mr. Mamdani does not own a car, the caller said he should be careful starting one.“The violent and specific language of what appears to be a repeat caller is alarming and we are taking every precaution,” Mr. Epstein said in a written statement.“While this is a sad reality, it is not surprising after millions of dollars have been spent on dehumanizing, Islamophobic rhetoric designed to stoke division and hate.”A police spokesman said there had been no arrests, but that an investigation was continuing.The threats came at a deadly moment for elected officials in the United States. Violence against politicians, judges and other government officials has skyrocketed in recent years.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Adams Bars Reporter From News Conferences for Being ‘Disrespectful’

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      After a contentious exchange, Mayor Eric Adams said, “Make sure security knows he’s not allowed back into this room.”Chris Sommerfeldt, who covers City Hall for The Daily News, spent part of Tuesday reporting on ICE agents’ arrest of Brad Lander, the New York City comptroller, at a Manhattan courthouse.By then, he was already the subject of some interest himself, after Mayor Eric Adams took the extraordinary step of barring him in the future from the weekly City Hall news conferences that are reporters’ only regular chance to ask Mr. Adams whatever they want.The mayor, whose interactions with reporters have often been contentious, imposed the ban after calling Mr. Sommerfeldt “disruptive” and “disrespectful” for shouting questions without being called on first, as is the custom at the so-called off-topic events.Mr. Sommerfeldt, one of two Daily News reporters who cover City Hall, has not been called on at one of the weekly events in more than three months, the newspaper reported.The exchange that preceded the mayor’s unusual move came as he discussed his plans for the general election campaign.Elected as a Democrat in 2021, Mr. Adams is skipping the party primary this year and has said he intends to run for re-election on two ballot lines of his own creation: EndAntiSemitism and Safe&Affordable.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Leonard A. Lauder, Philanthropist and Cosmetics Heir, Dies at 92

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      He was best known for his success in business, notably the international beauty company he built with his mother, Estée Lauder. But he was also an influential art patron.Leonard A. Lauder, the art patron and philanthropist who with his mother, Estée Lauder, built a family cosmetics business into a worldwide juggernaut that supplied generations of women with the creams, colors and scents of eternal youth, died on Saturday at his home on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. He was 92.The death was announced by the Estée Lauder Companies.While best known for his business enterprises, Mr. Lauder was also one of America’s most influential philanthropists and art patrons. He gave hundreds of millions to museums, medical institutions, and breast cancer and Alzheimer’s research, as well as to other cultural, scientific and social causes. His art collections ranged from postcards to Picassos.In 2013, he pledged the most significant gift in the history of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a trove of nearly 80 Cubist paintings, drawings and sculptures by Picasso, Braque, Léger and Gris. Scholars put the value of the gift at $1 billion and said its quality rivaled or surpassed that of the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, and the Pompidou Center in Paris.After the gift was announced, he added another dozen major Cubist works, The New York Times reported in a profile of Mr. Lauder last year.The eldest son of Estée Lauder, who in 1946 founded the company that bears her name, Mr. Lauder was for decades a senior executive and the marketing expert and corporate strategist behind his mother, the flamboyant public face of the Lauder empire, who pitched its lipsticks, bath oils, face powders and anti-wrinkle creams with almost messianic zeal.In a business reliant on imagery and mythmaking, his mother, the daughter of a Queens merchant, had created a genteel Hungarian aristocratic past for herself and a name to go with it. Josephine Esther Lauter, the wife of a luncheonette owner, thus became the glamorous Estée Lauder.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Public Defender Is Charged With Smuggling THC-Laced Paper Into Rikers

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      Bernardo Caceres was at New York City’s jail complex to meet with a client when an envelope he had drew the attention of a Correction Department dog, officials said.A public defender has been charged with trying to smuggle contraband into the Rikers Island jail complex after, officials said, he brought papers to a client meeting that were laced with THC, the main psychoactive chemical compound in marijuana.The public defender, Bernardo Caceres of Queens Defenders, was arrested about 3 p.m. Wednesday at the complex’s Otis Bantum Correctional Center, a Correction Department spokeswoman and the correction officers’ union said on Friday.Mr. Caceres and a second lawyer were there to meet with a client being held on a burglary charge, a union spokesman said. The second lawyer was not affiliated with Queens Defenders.A yellow envelope Mr. Caceres had with him caught the attention of a Correction Department dog, the agency’s spokeswoman said. When an officer retrieved the envelope from the client and opened it, he found a stack of discolored legal-size paperwork, the spokeswoman said.Jail officials have said that such discoloration can indicate the presence of drugs, and the spokeswoman said testing had determined that over 130 sheets of the paper contained traces of THC. Mr. Caceres was arrested and charged with promoting prison contraband, officials said. The second lawyer was released after officers determined he did not know that the papers might contain drugs.A spokeswoman for the Bronx district attorney’s office said that Mr. Caceres had been issued a desk appearance ticket and that further testing was needed to confirm the Correction Department’s finding that the papers contained THC.It was unclear whether Mr. Caceres had a lawyer. The Queens Defenders, one of several organizations in the city that represent indigent clients under government contracts, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The officers’ union has long argued that all mail coming into the city’s jails should be digitized and made available to detainees via electronic tablets to prevent paper from being used as a vehicle for smuggling. The Board of Correction, which has oversight of the city’s jails, considered such a change in 2023 but ultimately did not approve it.Benny Boscio Jr., the union’s president, said the episode on Wednesday underscored why a move to paperless mail was necessary. “Allowing paper documents to continue to enter our facility only compromises the safety of everyone in our jails,” Mr. Boscio said.The smuggling of contraband into the Rikers complex is a longstanding problem that has sometimes involved those who work there. Last year, for instance, several correction officers were charged with sneaking cellphones, oxycodone, marijuana, fentanyl and sheets of paper soaked in drugs into the complex.The arrest of Mr. Caceres, 30, came the same day that a founder of Queens Defenders, Lori Zeno, and her husband, Rashad Ruhani, were charged with wire fraud, money laundering conspiracy and theft of funds.The couple, prosecutors said, spent tens of thousands of dollars in organization funds on personal expenses, including a vacation in Bali, rent for a luxury apartment and teeth-whitening procedures. More

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      Mamdani and Lander Will Cross-Endorse Each Other in N.Y.C. Mayor’s Race

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      Zohran Mamdani and Brad Lander, the two leading progressive candidates in the race, hope their partnership will help them leverage the ranked-choice voting system to defeat Andrew M. Cuomo.Zohran Mamdani and Brad Lander, the leading progressive candidates in the Democratic primary for mayor of New York City, will cross-endorse each other on Friday, creating a late-stage partnership designed to help one of them surpass former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo in ranked-choice balloting.The candidates, who are second and third in the polls behind Mr. Cuomo, will encourage their supporters to rank them in the top two spots on their ballots. The city’s ranked-choice voting system allows primary voters to list up to five candidates in order of preference.If no candidate receives more than 50 percent of New Yorkers’ first-choice votes, ranked-choice tabulations will begin. When voters’ top choices are eliminated during that process, their support will get transferred to candidates who are lower on their ballots.The partnership, which is being announced one day before early voting begins, would effectively turn Mr. Mamdani, a state assemblyman, and Mr. Lander, the city comptroller, into something of a joint entry. They hope that one of them will eventually accumulate many of the other’s votes as a result.Mr. Mamdani, who has steadily risen in the polls and is running second behind Mr. Cuomo, said in a statement that at Thursday night’s debate, he and Mr. Lander had exposed Mr. Cuomo as “a relic of the broken politics of the past.”“I am proud to rank our principled and progressive comptroller No. 2 on my ballot because we are both fighting for a city every New Yorker can afford,” Mr. Mamdani said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More