Andrew Yang officially announced his candidacy for New York City mayor late Wednesday, nearly a year since the former Democratic presidential hopeful pulled the plug on his White House campaign.
“I moved to New York City 25 years ago. I came of age, fell in love and became a father here. Seeing our City the way it is now breaks my heart,” Mr. Yang said in a statement on social media.
“What we do in the coming months will determine our city’s trajectory for decades,” Mr. Yang said in the statement, which was accompanied on Twitter by a video advertisement for his mayoral campaign.
Mr. Yang, 46, filed paperwork last month indicating he planned to run for New York mayor in November, but he refrained from officially announcing his candidacy until this week.
A native New Yorker, Mr. Yang was born upstate and moved to Morningside Heights in Manhattan in 1996. He subsequently became a successful entrepreneur prior to pursuing a career in politics.
Mr. Yang launched a long-shot White House campaign in late 2017, and two years later it had outlasted those of several fellow Democratic candidates including members of Congress. He failed to out-poll the race’s front-runners, however, and he ended his campaign in February and subsequently endorsed Joseph R. Biden, the eventual winner of the 2020 presidential election.
In the video announcing his mayoral campaign, Mr. Yang said his platform includes policies such as establishing a guaranteed minimum income and ensuring high-speech internet access across the city.
“We need to launch the largest basic income program in history, invest in a human-centered economy, return to fact-based governance and create an accessible healthcare system,” Mr. Yang said on his site. “We need to do all this while enacting accountable and smart policing, building affordable housing, closing our city’s digital divide, modernizing transportation and city services, and more. We will move New York forward — together.”
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, who also briefly ran competed for the Democratic presidential nomination, is unable to run for reelection in November because of rules prohibiting the officer holder from serving more than two consecutive terms. The New York City Campaign Finance Board websites currently lists more than 30 candidates planning on running for mayor.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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