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    Most of Scott Stringer's Supporters Have Fled. Not the Teachers' Union

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    The United Federation of Teachers is boosting Mr. Stringer’s embattled campaign with an advertising blitz. In the weeks since a former campaign volunteer accused Scott M. Stringer of sexual misconduct, many of the Democratic mayoral candidate’s most crucial supporters, including the Working Families Party and a phalanx of progressive politicians, have abandoned his campaign. But powerful teachers’ unions are not only sticking with Mr. Stringer, the city comptroller — they are, starting Tuesday, offering a much-needed boost to his embattled campaign in the form of a multimillion-dollar advertising blitz.The American Federation of Teachers, the country’s second-largest teachers’ union, and the United Federation of Teachers, its large and influential New York City chapter, are the primary backers of the $4 million television and digital advertising effort. The ads and mailers will be paid for by NY 4 Kids, a super PAC created to “keep the issues affecting our schools, kids and teachers front and center in this election,” according to a release from the group. The A.F.T. has contributed $1 million so far, and the PAC has commitments for the remaining $3 million. The effort by the PAC, which is primarily funded by the unions, will more than triple the Stringer campaign’s own spending on ads, which has totaled about $1.3 million so far. The unions make up an essential part of the coalition that is still standing with Mr. Stringer before the Democratic primary in June. But their continued support for the candidate amounts to a very risky political bet for the U.F.T. in particular, which has failed to back a winning candidate for mayor since 1989. The union has significant power over key education decisions, but its influence in the city’s electoral politics could be weakened considerably if it once again bets on the wrong candidate. That has not deterred Randi Weingarten, the president of the A.F.T. and one of the most powerful union leaders in the country, from defending Mr. Stringer. On Sunday, she stood with the candidate and Representative Jerrold Nadler on Mr. Stringer’s home turf, the Upper West Side, to praise his record as a longtime local politician. “I’m very proud of that endorsement because of what Scott has done and what he will do,” said Ms. Weingarten, the former president of the U.F.T. “I think he’ll be a great mayor.”“Am I troubled by the allegations? Of course,” she said, adding, “I’m also a unionist who has dealt with false allegations.”Tyrone Stevens, a spokesman for Mr. Stringer, said the campaign was “thrilled to have the ongoing support of champions for public education, because they know the next mayor needs to be ready on day one to invest in our children and bring our schools back stronger than ever.”Some parents and mayoral candidates have accused the union of slowing the pace of school reopenings in New York over the last year. But with the majority of families still choosing to learn remotely, there is no evidence of a significant public backlash against the union. Other major unions have endorsed Mr. Stringer’s rivals, with several lining up behind Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president. But the U.F.T. backed Mr. Stringer, a longtime ally of the union, last month. When the U.F.T. president, Michael Mulgrew, was asked whether his 200,000-member union would support whoever the Democratic nominee was, he replied that Mr. Stringer would in fact be the nominee.The United Federation of Teachers endorsed Scott Stringer, right, in April.Benjamin Norman for The New York TimesThat was a cheekily confident projection even then, when limited public polling showed Mr. Stringer regularly polling third or fourth in the race. But just a week after the U.F.T. endorsement, Jean Kim, a political lobbyist who worked on a 2001 campaign for Mr. Stringer, said the candidate groped her on several occasions during that race. Mr. Stringer has vehemently denied the allegations, and has said that he and Ms. Kim had a brief, consensual relationship. Mr. Stringer has been competing for the left flank of the city’s electorate against Maya Wiley, a former counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio, and Dianne Morales, a former nonprofit leader, both of whom have picked up endorsements and energy from progressive groups in the wake of Ms. Kim’s allegations. In a recent interview with Bloomberg News, Mr. Mulgrew said his union was still backing Mr. Stringer in part because the accusations have not been proven. “One reason why unions got formed is that people get treated unfairly,” Mr. Mulgrew said. “There are lots of allegations all the time in the work we do.”Jeffery C. Mays contributed reporting. More

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      Teachers’ Union Backs Stringer for N.Y.C. Mayor, Giving Him a Boost

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      The endorsement comes at a critical time for the city comptroller, who has struggled to gain traction in the race.New York City’s influential teachers’ union endorsed the city comptroller, Scott M. Stringer, in the race for mayor on Monday, providing a much-needed boost to a campaign that has struggled to gain momentum thus far, despite Mr. Stringer’s deep experience in city politics.Mr. Stringer is a decades-long ally of the United Federation of Teachers and was long considered the front-runner for its support. With nine weeks before the June 22 primary, the endorsement comes at a critical time: In the limited public polling available, Mr. Stringer consistently trails the former presidential candidate Andrew Yang and the Brooklyn borough president, Eric Adams.In recent weeks, some labor leaders, political operatives and his own allies had privately worried about Mr. Stringer’s viability in the race, as the more moderate Mr. Yang has threatened his Manhattan base, and left-wing activists and leaders — expected to be solidly in Mr. Stringer’s corner — have not yet coalesced around a single candidate.Mr. Stringer is hoping to assemble a broad coalition that includes both traditional sources of Democratic power — in particular, union support — as well as backing from the left-wing activist slice of the party that has been influential in several recent elections across the city. Last week, in an effort to build a unified progressive front, the Working Families Party endorsed Mr. Stringer as the party’s first choice, followed by Dianne Morales, a former nonprofit executive, and Maya Wiley, a former counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio.Mr. Stringer referenced his position in the race during a news conference to announce the endorsement on Monday. “This race is getting started,” he said. “I’ve been known to close strong, this union closes strong, and I promise you the race of your lifetime.”The U.F.T.’s endorsement is coveted, because of the union’s political influence and its ability to mobilize its roughly 200,000 members. Still, its members are split into several political caucuses and may not vote as a bloc, and the union does not have the same organizational prowess as other large city unions.Over the last year, the teachers’ union was at odds with elements of the city’s push to reopen schools in the nation’s largest school system during the pandemic, placing the U.F.T. under an unusual level of scrutiny. Some parents who were not politically active before the reopening debate became deeply frustrated by the pace of reopening and critical of the union.It is not at all clear whether there are enough parents who have turned against the union to actually make a difference in the upcoming election; the vast majority of city parents have kept their children learning from home this year, and most city parents do not play close attention to union politics.The city has now reopened all grades for in-person learning, with many younger students back full-time, though some high school students who have returned to classrooms are still learning online from inside their school buildings.Mr. Stringer, who is himself a public school parent, was not a vocal supporter of Mr. de Blasio’s push to bring students back into classrooms last fall and was sometimes sharply critical of the mayor’s effort. Mr. Stringer and his wife decided to send one of their sons back into classrooms last fall and keep their other son learning remotely.As comptroller, Mr. Stringer has also criticized the mayor’s handling of the city’s homeless student crisis, and appeared to briefly jeopardize the rollout of the successful universal prekindergarten program after he raised alarms about the contracting process for some of those programs.Mr. Stringer’s promise to put two teachers in every elementary school classroom as mayor is attractive to the union, since it would boost its membership. But the idea has also appealed to education experts who have said adding more teachers could make traditional public schools more attractive to parents who might have considered gifted and talented programs or private schools, which tend to have large teaching staffs.Mr. Stringer is also one of a small group of mayoral hopefuls who have committed to eliminating the high-stakes exam that dictates entry into the city’s top high schools, including Stuyvesant High School. Like many of his rivals, he is skeptical about charter schools, a position that is all but a prerequisite for the U.F.T.’s backing.Mr. Stringer’s campaign is likely to use the endorsement as fresh evidence that his coalition-building strategy remains viable. Perhaps more than any other candidate in the race, Mr. Stringer’s candidacy — already supported by a long list of prominent New Yorkers — will test whether endorsements move voters in an unpredictable election unfolding amid a pandemic.The U.F.T.’s choice of Mr. Stringer also carries enormous stakes for the union.Unlike other powerful city unions, the teachers union has failed to endorse a winning candidate since 1989, when it backed the former mayor David N. Dinkins. That has prompted concern among U.F.T. officials that the union’s clout in electoral politics could shrink if it again bets on the wrong candidate. The former mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who clashed with the U.F.T. throughout his tenure, went so far as to call the union’s endorsement “the kiss of death” during the 2013 race to replace him.“I don’t know what goes through voters’ minds, but maybe they understand if the U.F.T. wants it, it ain’t good and you don’t want that person,” Mr. Bloomberg said at the time.The outcome of the race could offer major clues about how much weight the U.F.T.’s endorsement — or the backing of any municipal union — still matters in local politics.With the U.F.T. endorsement settled, most major municipal unions have made their choices — with the notable exception of the union representing transit workers. Many prominent unions have backed Mr. Adams, but Ms. Wiley scored a major victory in February when she won the endorsement of Local 1199 of the Service Employees International Union, the city’s largest union.In some years, labor unions have largely flocked to a particular candidate. Mr. Stringer, for example, had overwhelming support from labor groups in his 2013 race for comptroller, when he defeated the former governor, Eliot Spitzer. But this year, the labor endorsements are diffuse.One of the biggest open questions in the mayoral race is whether there will be any union-affiliated independent expenditure effort to stop Mr. Yang — but it is not yet clear which organizations, if any, would have both the resources and the inclination to mount one.Mr. Stringer has won the backing of other education unions, including the union representing school principals and administrators, and the union representing teachers and staff at the City University of New York. Mr. Yang has not earned a major union endorsement yet, but is leading in all publicly available polling.The teachers’ union membership includes about 75,000 active classroom teachers — as well as roughly 64,000 retirees, many of whom no longer live in New York. About 90 percent of the U.F.T.’s delegate assembly — a group of about 3,400 elected representatives, including educators from each school in the city — voted to back Mr. Stringer on Monday afternoon.The union has, for decades, played a major and occasionally decisive role in key education decisions, and that has been particularly true over the last year.The U.F.T. made a number of safety demands last summer, and tensions escalated to the point that the union president, Michael Mulgrew, suggested that teachers would strike if those safety demands were not met. Public health experts supported many of those demands, such as improved ventilation, but some families were angered by the union’s insistence that all rules remain in place even as teachers were vaccinated.Advisers for Mr. Yang are hoping to attract at least some of those disaffected families.During a recent interview on Fox Business, Bradley Tusk, the powerful political strategist and lobbyist who is, with his team, managing Mr. Yang’s campaign, said his candidate “takes positions that are a little at odds with the Democratic orthodoxy on things like education.“The teachers’ unions [have] blocked the ability for students to come back into the schools of New York City,” he added.Though Mr. Yang accused the union of delaying school reopening in an interview with Politico, he walked back his comments during a recent U.F.T. forum held to determine the endorsement. Mr. Yang said he and Mr. Mulgrew had agreed that the mayor, not the union, was primarily to blame for any stumbles on reopening. City Hall officials say that last summer, the union represented a significant obstacle to reopening.Dana Rubinstein contributed reporting. More

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      N.Y.C. Mayor's Race Takeaways: Who Will 'Vax Daddy' Endorse?

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      Candidates vied for the backing of the influential teachers’ union and other players, and one contender made a journey to Minneapolis.New York City’s mayoral contest is indeed beginning to pick up steam.A handful of endorsements were issued, and two more influential ones — from the United Federation of Teachers and the Working Families Party — may soon follow.Candidates also fanned out across the city and beyond. Andrew Yang, the former presidential candidate, appeared with the city’s celebrity-of-the-moment: Huge Ma, the creator of the TurboVax website that makes it easier to schedule a vaccine appointment.Maya Wiley, the former MSNBC analyst and counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio, did a sprightly double Dutch jig on a sunny day in the Bronx. And Raymond J. McGuire, a former Citigroup executive, visited Minneapolis to pray for justice outside the courthouse where the former police officer Derek Chauvin is on trial in the killing of George Floyd.Here’s what you need to know about the race:Blue-collar support vs. a ‘change-maker’Maya Wiley, left, was endorsed by Representative Yvette Clarke, a Brooklyn Democrat, who said that Ms. Wiley was the “change-maker this moment calls for.”Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesTwo Democratic members of Congress made mayoral endorsements last week: Tom Suozzi, a moderate who represents parts of Queens and Long Island, and Yvette Clarke from Brooklyn, who has one of the most liberal voting records in Congress.Mr. Suozzi backed Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president; Ms. Clarke supported Ms. Wiley.Mr. Suozzi emphasized Mr. Adams’s focus on “blue-collar workers” and the fact that Mr. Adams “led while others fled” — a reference to Mr. Yang, who spent portions of the pandemic at a second home in the Hudson Valley with his family, leaving his apartment in Manhattan.Ms. Clarke said Ms. Wiley is “the change-maker this moment calls for” and would bring “competence and compassion to City Hall.” She said Ms. Wiley was one of the first top-tier mayoral candidates who “embodies the feminine” — apparently ignoring or discounting past Democratic hopefuls like Ruth Messinger, the first woman to win the party’s mayoral nomination, or Christine Quinn and Bella Abzug, who both lost primary elections for the Democratic nomination, as well as a Republican candidate, Nicole Malliotakis, now a member of Congress.Ms. Clarke later clarified that she did not intend to “diminish or erase” other women running for mayor this year or in past elections.Scott M. Stringer, the city comptroller, received an endorsement from the union that represents public school principals. Mr. Yang received support from Matthew W. Daus, the city’s former taxi commissioner whose role in the current taxi crisis has been scrutinized.Mr. Yang also landed an appearance, but not quite an endorsement, from Mr. Ma, sometimes known as “Vax Daddy,” at a news conference outside a vaccination site in Washington Heights, and said he wanted to hire him in a Yang administration. Mr. Ma said he was not ready to back a candidate quite yet.“The only thing I am ready to endorse is more protected bike lanes,” he said.An unorthodox way to seek an endorsementOne of the last major unclaimed endorsements should be decided this month, and the top four candidates — Mr. Stringer, Ms. Wiley, Mr. Adams and Mr. Yang — made their cases on Wednesday at a forum hosted by the United Federation of Teachers.Of the four, Mr. Yang seemed to be the most willing to diverge from union orthodoxy, seemingly hurting his chances for the endorsement.He was the only candidate to unequivocally say he wanted to retain mayoral control of city schools as is, contrary to union efforts to weaken mayoral control. He was also the only candidate to admit to not reading the union’s five-point plan for reopening schools in September.But Mr. Yang, who has one son in public school and another in private school, said that he no longer entirely blames the union for reopening delays during the pandemic.He said he now understood that Mayor Bill de Blasio was to blame, too, relating a conversation he had with Michael Mulgrew, the union’s president and the forum’s moderator.“You conveyed to me that it’s been a failure of leadership on the part of the mayor and that the teachers need a partner who’s committed to reopening the schools in a responsible way that protects teachers and makes everyone feel safe and secure,” Mr. Yang said. “I agree that the mayor has failed the teachers and public school parents like me.”The comments represented a departure from what he told Politico in March, when he said that “the U.F.T. has been a significant reason why our schools have been slow to open.”They also seemed to offend the current mayor.“I don’t know what Andrew Yang is talking about now,” said Bill Neidhardt, a spokesman for the mayor. “Mayor de Blasio was the only big-city mayor to open up schools.”Campaign trail extends to MinneapolisRaymond J. McGuire visited Minneapolis to attend a prayer service outside the courthouse where the former police officer Derek Chauvin is on trial in the death of George Floyd.Stephen Maturen/Getty ImagesMr. McGuire is a moderate on policing. He served on the New York City Police Foundation, a nonprofit that raises money for the Police Department, and has not called for police to be defunded as some of his fellow candidates have.So his decision to travel last week to Minneapolis, where the officer who knelt on George Floyd’s neck for almost 10 minutes is on trial for murder and manslaughter, seemed to convey a political message.Mr. McGuire was there with Gwen Carr, the mother of Eric Garner, who died after a New York Police Department officer placed him in a chokehold in 2014 on Staten Island; the Rev. Al Sharpton; and a former New York State governor, David Paterson. The group met privately with Mr. Floyd’s family.Mr. Sharpton said that Mr. McGuire called and asked if he could join him in Minneapolis, where he has traveled regularly to support Mr. Floyd’s family. He said Mr. Garner’s death showed New York is not immune from such tragedies.“This is not an isolated issue or a question or whether it could happen here; it did happen here,” Mr. Sharpton said.Mr. Sharpton has yet to endorse in the race for mayor, but said that he viewed Mr. McGuire’s interest in Mr. Floyd’s trial as a good sign. “He was the only one who asked to go, and that speaks for itself,” he said.Candidates for mayor should take note of the Minneapolis police chief’s testimony that his officer had violated departmental rules in Mr. Floyd’s death, Mr. Sharpton said, adding that the next mayor should dismantle the so-called blue wall of silence.Mr. McGuire, who said that the “evidence is incontrovertible” that Mr. Floyd’s death was a criminal act, said that policing in New York could be “fixed with the right leadership.”“We want better policing,” Mr. McGuire said. “You go to the neighborhood, and people aren’t talking about defund.”70 plans in 70 daysShaun Donovan, a former federal housing secretary, will announce a “70 Plans in 70 Days” campaign, highlighting one idea every day until Primary Day.David Dee Delgado/Getty ImagesShaun Donovan, the former federal housing secretary, is trying to distinguish himself in the crowded field as the policy wonk who has the best proposals to improve the city.Mr. Donovan will announce his “70 Plans in 70 Days” campaign this week and highlight one idea every day until Primary Day.“By June 22, I am confident that every New York City voter will know who the most qualified person is to lead our city through this crisis, and who has the actual plans to get the job done,” Mr. Donovan said.His proposals include equity bonds, a government-funded savings account for every child; 15-minute neighborhoods, where every resident has access to a good school, rapid transit and a beautiful park within 15 minutes of their home; and allowing noncitizens to vote in city elections.Mr. Donovan has a pile of cash to help get the word out: His father, Michael Donovan, has given $2 million to a super PAC for his son.Mr. Donovan has been lagging in the polls, and his campaign took aim at Mr. Yang last week. It joked that Mr. Donovan would not climb atop salt piles when visiting a sanitation facility like Mr. Yang did.One of Mr. Yang’s campaign managers hit back on Twitter: “Will his dad not let him climb on the salt?”Andrew Yang is writing a bookIn February, Mr. Yang made headlines for skipping a forum with Muslim groups on the same day that he spoke on a podcast hosted by Sam Harris, who has made incendiary remarks about Islam.Less noticed at the time: At the conclusion of Mr. Yang’s nearly hourlong appearance on the podcast, he indicated that he was writing a book — one that apparently deals in part with the new system that will be used in the mayoral election, ranked-choice voting.He said on the podcast that the book was slated to come out in the late summer.On Sunday, Mr. Yang’s campaign confirmed that Mr. Yang, already an author, indeed had another book coming, to be published by Random House, and that he finished a draft at the end of last year.“Andrew is solely focused on the mayoral campaign and will not be publishing this book until afterwards,” said Eric Soufer, a spokesman for Mr. Yang. “The book will be about Andrew’s experience in the presidential campaign, along with his vision for decreasing polarization, increasing turnout and improving the health of our democracy.”The book, he said, ends before Mr. Yang’s run for mayor. 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