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Dear John,Sorry it’s taken me a couple of days, but I wanted to write this one personally, and the hours since Tuesday night have been a whirlwind.

Mostly, I want to say: THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!

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Thank you to everyone who supported this campaign, including the thousands of you who contributed to it or hosted a house party, and to all the volunteers who canvassed across the five boroughs getting our message out there, even on the hottest day in 12 years.

Thanks to our extraordinary staff, for your incredible work, and for never wavering on me, even when things sometimes felt like they weren’t going as we wanted.

Thank you to everyone who believed in a future for our beloved city where we end the Adams-Cuomo corruption, stand up and fight for our progressive New York values, and make government work to deliver on them.

I want to thank and congratulate Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani on the incredible success of his campaign, and on his resounding victory on Tuesday night. Together, we have defeated the disgraced, abusive, morally bankrupt former governor – and we are indeed sending Andrew Cuomo back to the suburbs.

Even better than that: we are building something genuinely hopeful – a vision for the future of our city that everyone can afford, and where everyone belongs.

I can’t really put into words how moving it has been to be a part of. But I feel immensely grateful for it. And I hope you do, too.

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Running for Mayor of New York City has been the proudest, hardest, most humbling, awe-inspiring time of my life. Like the ad we filmed on the Cyclone [[link removed]] – and yes, it’s all real, and of course the hot dog was from Nathan’s – there were a lot of ups and downs. I’m especially grateful to the people who stuck with me through the downs.

The last two weeks were especially remarkable.

First, the New York Times Opinion panel [[link removed]] said I was the best candidate to lead the city, followed a few days later by this remarkable column by Ezra Klein [[link removed]] .

Then, during the second Mayoral debate (under strict instructions from my son Marek to hit harder than I had in the first one), I hope I made you proud in eviscerating Andrew Cuomo on the debate stage.

The day after that debate, I was proud to join forces with Zohran, cross-endorsing each other [[link removed]] for the first time in New York City history.

And then three days later, while trying to accompany an asylum-seeker out of court, I was arrested and detained by ICE agents. The episode was unplanned and unexpected, and called attention to the travesty of justice taking place in our country.

As Meg beautifully made clear while I was in detention, this isn’t about me. It’s about how we stand up for other people. It’s about how we fight to prevent far-right authoritarians from tearing our country – or city – apart.

And as my friend Greg Casar says, the line right now for Democrats is not between progressives and moderates, it’s between fighters and folders.

John, I probably don’t have to tell you this: the campaign did not go quite as I mapped it out when we launched last July.

But I’m pretty sure of this: no candidate who polled third, with 11% of the vote, ever felt as thrilled on election day as I did.

Something pretty magical emerged in the final days of this campaign. Out of the darkness of the past five years – the pandemic, corruption at City Hall, Trump’s re-election, the corrosion of our democracy – it feels like we have a glimpse of the bright light of day.

Politics doesn’t have to be the dark, negative, sour, selfish undertaking that so many of us hate.

Through our cross-endorsement, Zohran and I were able to bridge our differences. To show that Muslim New Yorkers and Jewish New Yorkers don’t have to be divided from one another. That politics can be a team sport in pursuit of a better future for this city we love. That we could do it with joy.

Our work does not end here, not by a long shot. We have work to do to elect Zohran Mamdani as the Mayor of New York City in the general election in November. More on that soon.

We still have affordable housing to build – my life’s work, now and always. We have immigrant neighbors to stand up for. We have a generation of young New Yorkers to inspire. We have a democracy to protect.

My sleeves stay rolled up. I’m in this fight for the long haul.

John, as you know, I love this city profoundly – and deeply. I love living here with Meg, and the home we’ve been able to build for Marek and Rosa. I’ve loved serving it in the City Council and now as Comptroller, and I will not stop loving it.

For today, let’s celebrate everything we’ve achieved over this campaign – especially these dizzying past few weeks – and wake up tomorrow more determined than ever.

With more gratitude than I could possibly express (however long an email they let me write),

Brad
Lander for Mayor
32 Court Street
Suite 1506
Brooklyn, NY 11201
United States
[email protected] [[email protected]]
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