Seven candidates vying to be the next mayor of New York City joined The Nation and the Working Families Party for a forum on Saturday afternoon. The panel, moderated by Dr. Christina Greer, an associate professor of political science at Fordham University, included City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams; Assemblyman Zohran Mamndani; State Senator Zellnor Myrie; City Comptroller Brad Lander; former city comptroller Scott Stringer; State Senator Jessica Ramos; and former Barack Obama staffer and assemblyman Michael Blake. The forum split the candidates into two groups, with one lightning round in between, as Greer and the audience offered questions about how each candidate would lead the city if elected.

While each of the candidates attempted to distinguish themselves from their peers, all of them seemed to unite around two main issues: the city’s affordability crisis and the lack of leadership fitness in former New York movernor Andrew Cuomo and current New York City mayor Eric Adams, who were invited to the forum but either rejected or didn’t reply to the invitation.

Among the candidates who received the most cheering from the crowd on Saturday was assemblyman and avowed Democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani, who announced this week that he has hit the public financing cap for donations, bringing in over $8 million, including projected matching funds from about 18,000 donors citywide. Mamdani was the only candidate on Saturday to bring up the arrest of green-card holder Mahmoud Khalil, who was heavily involved in pro-Palestine protests at Columbia University’s campus last year, as part of Trump’s widespread detainment spree.

While all of the candidates present offered platforms progressive enough for the Working Families Party to invite them to the forum, and in some cases consider endorsing them, each offered a slightly different vision for the city. The first section of the forum was comprised of Zellnor Myrie, Scott Stringer, and Jessica Ramos. When Greer asked these candidates why working-class New Yorkers should trust them to lead, Myrie spoke about his working-class background and his commitment to providing free, universal after-school care. Ramos highlighted her background working in city government and her affordable housing plan that centers “modest equity home ownership,” while Stringer spoke about his upbringing in a family of local politicians and his plan to build “Mitchell-Lama 2.0” by leveraging vacant, city-owned land.

One of the big questions for these candidates was how they would stand up to Trump as mayor of the biggest city in the country. Stringer and Myrie offered the most vague answers, saying they would do so by running an “excellent government,” and considering unity, respectively. Ramos was more bold, announcing a plan to get us ready to withhold New Yorkers’ federal taxes from the Trump administration.

Digging into what they would do during their first 100 days, Ramos said she would declare a mental health state of emergency. Myrie touted his “ambitious” housing plan and said he would set up an interagency task force to help bring down the number of shootings in the city, while Stringer said he would work with the state legislatures to fund his “NYC Tri-Share Childcare Fund” initiative and staff the mayor’s office with “diverse talent.”

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When asked about Kathy Hochul’s performance as governor, including her push for a mask ban, all three candidates from the first cohort leaned into their ability to work with her. Ramos said she is against a mask ban; Myrie said he has “concerns” around her current proposal; and Stringer said he is “open to it,” though he “obviously believes in the Constitution and civil liberties.” (At other points during the event, Mamdani and Blake indicated that they are against a mask ban.)

At one point, an audience member asked the candidates whether they would drop out to support another progressive candidate. Stringer answered by saying the race is about “coalition building,” but that “at the end of the day, I will be the strongest candidate against Cuomo.” Myrie and Ramos gave noncommittal answers, appearing to indicate that they would wait and see.

During a lightning round, which included all seven present candidates, Greer tossed out lighthearted questions, like what their favorite train is and who their favorite mayor of New York City was. On the favorite mayor question, all chose Fiorello La Guardia, except for Adrienne Adams who said, “After four years, I hope you’ll say me.”

The second section of the forum was comprised of Michael Blake, Adrienne Adams, Zohran Mamdani, and Brad Lander. In pitching himself to working-class New Yorkers, Michael Blake said he wants to “keep more money in your pocket” by enacting policies like universal child care and doing away with credit score checks on rental and mortgage applications.

Adrienne Adams pointed to her leadership in the City Council, especially when it comes to resisting cuts to the budget. “In fighting this mayor, we have come against budgets that have sought to take away from the working-class people of the city of New York,” she said. Meanwhile, Lander spoke about his experience working for the city, including fighting for more housing through the rezoning of Gowanus, and touted his ambitious plan to build 500,000 homes in the city over 10 years. Mamdani highlighted his experience going on a hunger strike to demand debt relief for striking taxi workers, and ticked through the core planks of his affordability-focused campaign, which includes making buses “fast and free” and enacting universal childcare.

On the question of Trump, Adams said she has experience standing up to “bullies” and can be a “voice of strength.” Lander got a strong audience reaction when he spoke about using the convening powers of City Hall to gather university presidents to discuss how they will “stand up together” to the Trump administration. “We’re not going to cave like Columbia did,” he said to applause, referencing the university’s recent yielding to certain demands from the Trump administration.

When pressed about his first 100 days, Lander said he would create a mayor’s office of workers’ rights and would declare a housing emergency (separate from the one that gives the city the authority to enact its rent stabilization system). He also said he would bring his top appointees to the City Council for “advice and consent so New Yorkers can see that the people running city agencies are first rate and have integrity.”

Detailing one of his common refrains on social media, Mamdani said he would appoint members to the Rent Guidelines Board who would freeze the rent for all rent-stabilized apartments. Blake laid out a vision to collaborate with state partners in Albany and “reimagine our education” with a focus on civics, financial literacy, and mental health.

On a topic many New Yorkers are eager for answers to, one audience member asked how, given potential federal cuts to the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, the candidates would approach public health in New York. Speaking of potential federal cuts more broadly, Mamdani indicated that he’s open to raising the corporate tax rate and wants the city to be more diligent in collecting outstanding fines from landlords. “Right now, what we’re seeing is a paucity of imagination and ambition to fight for working people before embracing what we are being told is the only option in front of us,” he said. Adams also indicated that she’s open to taxes on the “highest wage earners.” In answering that same question, Blake called current overtime payments for the NYPD “absurd”—another big clap moment—and said that he’s in favor of a vacant apartment tax on people that are not living in New York City. Lander added that he would also change the way claims against the city are handled, so that a claim stemming from a traffic crash by a city driver or police misconduct would get paid for by the agency that’s responsible for the incident.

This weekend’s forum came just as the Working Families Party tries to harness the power of ranked-choice voting in 2025 after the dashed hopes for a progressive mayor in 2021. The group is pushing “unity around the strategy” over “unity around a candidate,” and is interested in endorsing candidates who show a “willingness to collaborate” with other progressive candidates, Working Families Party codirector Ana María Archila said in December. At the end of the forum, Archila announced that the party would be endorsing candidates in two stages, first identifying a slate of candidates and then ranking them. Archila told The Nation that all the candidates on stage that day have sought the endorsement of the Working Families Party, except for Stringer. Asked who she was most impressed with during the forum, Archila said she “loved them all.” “The thing that I saw today was something that makes me really proud,” she added. “Which is that there was a full display of the spectrum of progressive politics.”