NEW YORK (BLOOMBERG) -- Jim Walden, a long-shot independent candidate in New York City’s mayoral race, said he’s the best hope to defeat democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani because he’s untainted by scandal.
A litigator and former federal prosecutor, Walden is polling at just 1%, according to a recent Slingshot Strategies survey. But he insists he’ll break through by positioning himself as the best alternative to Mamdani rivals weighed down by investigations, indictments and controversies. He’s pledged to create a Department of Public Integrity empowered to investigate any city office, including the mayor’s.
“Now is the time that we need the clean candidate who’s got a record of integrity and no baggage,” Walden said in an interview at Bloomberg’s headquarters in New York. “Every one of the other candidates has actual scandals.”
Walden slammed Mamdani, who beat Andrew Cuomo by 12 points in the Democratic primary, as an “existential risk” to the city’s economy. Mamdani campaigned on promises to freeze the rent on affordable housing, and fund free buses and government-run grocery stores with new taxes on corporations and high-earners. His proposals have unnerved business leaders and real estate groups.
Walden said Cuomo and Mayor Eric Adams, who are also running on third-party lines, are politically compromised by past investigations, while Republican Curtis Sliwa has his own controversies from leading the Guardian Angels, a neighborhood street patrol.
Cuomo resigned as governor almost four years ago amid multiple allegations of sexual harassment, which he denies. Adams last year became the first New York mayor in modern history to be indicted on federal corruption charges. The charges were later dropped by the Trump administration, leading to criticism that the mayor is now beholden to the Republican president.
But to stop Mamdani, Walden has proposed that all but the highest-polling independent candidate suspend their campaign in October to unify the opposition. Cuomo has agreed to the plan.
Walden’s platform includes expanding the Police Department, building 50,000 homes annually and making the city carbon-neutral.
To tackle affordability, he’s pledged $1 billion a year in rent relief for the city’s most rent-burdened tenants, funded immediately by cutting ineffective programs and using the city’s budget surplus, and in the future, by instituting a 0.75% “micro-tax” on goods and services, which he said would raise an estimated $60 billion over four years. Walden said the tax is small enough that it won’t cause companies to alter their business decisions. He would need state approval for the tax.
He also wants to create a contract-based rent-stabilization program to incentive more affordable housing.
“Freezing rents that are already high is not a solution,” Walden said of Mamdani’s plan. Instead, “target the cohort of people that are severely rent-burdened and get them money right away to pay out — and not do it off the backs of landlords that are already not making enough capital investments in these apartments.”
Walden, 59, hopes to create a program that provides “seed money” in an account for every child born into poverty that’s invested in the stock market and can be used in adulthood to pay for college or living expenses.
Walden, founder of the law firm Walden Macht Haran & Williams, also said he backs getting the mentally ill off the street and into long-term treatment, citing the the death of his mentally ill sister on the street. He also wants to attract more venture capital and private equity to the city.
Walden, who said he left the Democratic Party in 2006, recently reported raising $1.54 million and receiving $2 million in public matching funds. His donors include attorneys Marc Agnifilo and David Boies; former Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr.; and futurist Faith Popcorn.
In his legal career, which includes nine years as a federal prosecutor, Walden has both challenged and worked with political powerhouses. He sued Cuomo in 2018 over a law targeting prosecutors but also persuaded him to fund emergency repairs at New York City Housing Authority buildings. He also represented a fire official who accused Adams of pressuring him to greenlight a Turkish consulate, a claim at the center of the now-dismissed bribery charges.
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