As six mayoral hopefuls made their case at Columbia Journalism School on Monday, students in the audience were paying close attention – not just to policy details, but to the clarity and compassion of each candidate’s proposals for New York City.
The forum, hosted by the local journalism class City Newsroom, featured one-on-one interviews with City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, former Assemblymember Michael Blake, former hedge fund manager Whitney Tilson and former Assistant U.S. Attorney Jim Walden. State Senators Jessica Ramos and Zellnor Myrie participated remotely, via Zoom.
Candidates were given the opportunity to tackle different issues, from housing to immigration to campus policing and the Trump administration. Students offered mixed reviews after the two-hour event. Some came away impressed with what they had heard, while others left skeptical –or unsettled.
“As a native New Yorker,” said Perri Yaniv, “I have rarely seen a mayoral candidate that I would consider up to par for what this city needs.” Yaniv, a part-time journalism student and clinical research coordinator at the university’s hospital, was, however, impressed with most of the forum participants, except for two that he felt “seemed really out of touch with the breadth of what this city really is.”
He thought that Adams, Myrie and Ramos were the clearest in terms of vision and the most realistic about what they wanted to achieve. And even though he liked Blake’s answers, he couldn’t see him delivering on his Project 2026 NYC platform.
“He felt the most like a New Yorker to me,” Yaniv said. “But I don’t know if that’s always what’s best for politics in the city.”
An informal poll right after the forum showed Ramos as the top candidate based on performance with 37%, followed by Adams, with 29.6%.
Charlie Back, a University College London student currently at Columbia’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, was one of the students impressed with Ramos.
“The fact that she could not attend in person,” said Back, “but walking around the streets of New York on a Zoom call spoke for itself.” Back highlighted her approach to housing.
“She at least showed some compassion towards families and their loved ones.” said Chris Caurla, an M.A. student at the Journalism School. “She acknowledged that, and I think that matters,” he added.
Attendees ranked immigration as their top concern for them in this mayoral election, followed by housing and affordability.
Some students disliked Walden’s and Tilson’s responses about the crackdown on Columbia’s pro-Palestinian protests.
“I expected them to be a little more political or diplomatic,” said Anna Oakes, a second-year part-time student at the Journalism School and a podcast producer. “Especially when talking about calling the police on campus.”
Caurla said both Tilson and Walden did not accurately portray the events at Columbia and missed pushback from the moderator, Local Journalism Professor Juan Manuel Benítez, a similar sentiment raised by Oakes.
“I think it’s a little strange to see an event like this hosted by Columbia,” Caurla said, “where New York mayoral candidates are pushing narratives that have caused so many problems on this campus.”
“They should have been held to account for their answers,” Oakes said.
The forum was open to Columbia staff, faculty and students –many of them from overseas, worried about the current political climate.
“Several candidates described what they would do with collaboration with ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] and the federal government and I think that was the most newsworthy thing for a lot of us,” said an international student on an F1 visa who requested anonymity.
Racquel Miller is a journalist covering housing for City Newsroom. She’s passionate about broadcast journalism and hopes to become a news producer.
