NEW YORK (1010 WINS) -- A Wall Street executive has entered the crowded New York City mayoral field with an endorsement from filmmaker Spike Lee.
Ray McGuire, a Harvard College graduate who served as head of global corporate and investment banking at Citigroup for the past 13 years, launched his campaign Wednesday morning with a video narrated by Lee.
“NY is experiencing life defining crises. The already big job of Mayor has become even more critical,” McGuire wrote in a post sharing the video. “I will use my proven leadership & managerial expertise to vitalize the City we love & guide us through the toughest challenges we’ve ever faced.”
McGuire, whose single mother and grandparents raised him in Dayton Ohio, “didn’t have much growing up,” his campaign website says.
After getting an academic scholarship in fifth grade, he went on to attend The Hotchkiss School, a prep school in Connecticut, with “another scholarship, more student loans and more borrowed money” before enrolling at Harvard, “becoming the first in his family to graduate from college,” according to his website.
He ended up on Wall Street, where he spent 36 years “[leading] businesses responsible for generating $20+ billion a year in revenue supporting public and private sector clients around the world,” his website says.
“I’ve been a have and I’ve been a have not,” he wrote on his site. “Today, I’m proud to be able to give back to my city and I feel fortunate to serve on a number of civic, charitable and educational institutions.”
His campaign, he said in his launch video, will focus on New York City’s recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Every New Yorker deserves a chance to get back in the game,” he said. “And all of New York deserves a leader who can bring this city together and solve this crisis.”