Jumaane Williams

Publicly Advocating for Grassroots Issues, Wants the Democratic Party to Do Better

By Nayaba Arinde
Editor-at-Large
With decades in the public eye, not adverse to political controversy, Grenadian-American Jumaane Williams is back in familiar territory – campaigning for political office.
As he runs for re-election to be the Public Advocate of New York City, the Democrat with a Working Families Party endorsement wants the Democrats to re-engage the demographic who felt taken for granted, and abandoned and so came out and voted “with their anger, and their fear,” hence Republican Donald Trump became the president.

Democrats are forgoing reliability and replacing it with uncertainty, Williams suggested. Certain kitchen table issues should be top of mind for the party, but are not, he said.
Regarding housing–“I don’t think we could be in a worse situation,” Public Advocate Williams told Our Time Press. “We have the highest rental market in the country. It’s really bad. If folks had listened to us many years ago, we may have been in a different situation.”

As Chairman of the City Council’s Housing and Buildings Committee, he advocated for “deeply affordable housing to help prevent communities from being priced out of the five boroughs.”
He told Our Time Press this week, “The country has been talking about affordable housing for a very long time. People ignored it. That’s part of the reason I believe we have this wanna-be dictator in the White House, because he was responding to what people were saying.”

Those who ignored the ongoing plight include leaders of his own party, Williams charged, when they are “more concerned about incumbency protection and leadership protection, we get in trouble.

“There was a point when Donald Trump was debating Hillary Clinton, and he said, ‘I know that the system is rigged because I use it,’ and he said, ‘I know Democrats won’t do anything about it, because your wealthy donors won’t allow you to.’

That is one of the truest statements ever said, and we did not prove him wrong, and people came out and voted with their anger and their fear. If we can just get our leaders in the party that I belong to, to just stop trying to stifle folk who are really responding to the people’s needs, we’d be in a much better place.”

Across the aisle, Williams continued, “Republicans allow their populist message to go through. Democrats do everything they can to stifle their populist message. And now Andrew Cuomo, who helped get us Trump, is on the pathway to getting to the mayoralty, because the powers in the party want that.

They don’t want someone who is talking about freezing the rent and free buses. They are more afraid of [that] than Andrew Cuomo, who has harmed the office. That was replicated across the country, and I was hoping that we had learned the lesson, but we are making the same mistake in real time.”

Is there a concern that this may result in folks choosing not to go to the polls
“We saw that happen across the country,” replied Williams. “A lot of folk stayed home. I think that is the wrong thing to do because you are going to jump out of the frying pan into the fire. The Donald Trump presidency is legitimately central to the crisis, as we are seeing now.

You understand why people are fed up and say they are not coming out. But there are differences that make it enough to come out and choose somebody who is not going to be as bad as the other person.

But Democrats have relied on that message for too long, and people are tired of it. They are feeling afraid–public safety is something you have to lean into, and they are feeling that they cannot afford to live, and I don’t know how the Democrats allow the wealthiest people in the world to command that message. It makes no sense and is disappointing.”

The Public Advocate added, “Andrew Cuomo has a real shot of becoming mayor because Eric Adams was so bad that he is bringing back Andrew Cuomo.”
Last year, there was talk of Public Advocate Williams taking over as mayor for then-federally indicted, embattled Eric Adams. But Trump got Adams’ charges dropped, and he is running for mayor again—as an independent.

Williams told the paper, “I couldn’t be more disappointed in the disgraceful leadership of Eric Adams, and I think a lot of people feel that way, that’s why he doesn’t have a tremendous amount of support even among Black leaders. All of them have left.

Except maybe one or two. That’s a hell of a sign of bad leadership, that you might have someone like Andrew Cuomo coming back. I hope that people should understand not to replace someone who left in a disgraceful way, with someone who themselves left in a disgraceful way.

Andrew Cuomo is a chameleon. Whatever you believe in congestion pricing, in bail reform, in minimum wage, in mental health–whatever you believe, he has believed in on some point, depending on what was beneficial to him. That is why we are in this position, because that is not leadership. We need someone who is going to take a stand for what is best for New Yorkers first.”

Ultimately, Williiams determined, “I am very concerned, and everybody should be very concerned about what a Mayor Cuomo would look like, and we should do everything we can not to rank him, and leave him off everyone’s ballot.”

With his own ranking list, Williams told Our Time Press, “Brad Lander, Speaker Adams tied for number one. For number two, we think you should choose one of those. For number three–Zohran Mamdani, then Zellnor Myrie, and Scott Stringer.”

Empowered as he spoke on it, Williams did not allow his teenage diagnosis with Tourette Syndrome to deter his trajectory as he worked his way up through the NYC public school system, including Brooklyn Tech High School. He eventually represented Brooklyn’s 45th District in the New York City Council from 2009 to 2019.

After taking over from Tish James in the 2019 special election, he has served as New York City’s Public Advocate since 2019.
Unsuccessfully, impressive numbers notwithstanding, Williams ran for Lieutenant Governor in 2018 and Governor in 2022. Both times, Kathy Hochul got the deciding votes.

In January 2025 , civil rights attorney Assemblywoman Jenifer Rajkumar pulled out of the race for comptroller and switched to the one for public advocate.
Williams now has a primary on his hands.

“It’s going fairly well, but we have got to keep pushing. What we need now is to raise more money. One of our opponents has a little more money than us because she was running for comptroller in a very competitive race, and she decided to change in [January], and she brought that money over with her.”

He added that his opponent, Rajkumar, is “a very big ally of Eric Adams.”
As the incumbent, he added, “We feel good about the race that we are running, but you always want to feel great, so we are not taking anything for granted.”