New York Attorney General Letitia James launched a bid for governor on Friday, taking her next step on a historic path of firsts for New York State — and possibly the nation.
James was the first Black woman elected to hold citywide office when she became New York City Public Advocate in 2013; the first woman and the first Black woman to be elected to statewide office in her role as New York Attorney General; and if elected governor, she would become the first Black woman to hold the chief executive position in the history of the nation.
Currently, she is one of only six Black women who hold any statewide elected office, according to a report released just last week by the Center for American Women and Politics at the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University of New Jersey.
In her official campaign launch video (and on her newly launched campaign website) James said her career was guided by this principle: “stand up to the powerful on behalf of the vulnerable to be a force for change.
James has served as state attorney general since winning a special election in 2018. Her tenure has been marked with high profile lawsuits against the likes of the NRA and the Trump organization (76 lawsuits, she noted in her campaign video). She also secured major settlements, including millions against opioid manufacturers. Earlier this month, she visited cities across the state as part of what she branded her “HealNY Tour” where she talked about how to combat the opioid epidemic and what localities could do with the funds from those settlements.
Not unlike her bid for governor, her historic election as the first Black woman in that statewide office was preceded by the resignation of another man facing sexual misconduct allegations. Then it was Eric Schneiderman, who stepped down within hours of The New Yorker publishing a scathing account of his behavior towards four women.
This time, the man was Andrew Cuomo, who resigned as governor in August a week after James released a report by investigators hired by her office which substantiated the allegations of 11 women who lodged varying sexual misconduct complaints against the then governor.
"This is a sad day for New York because independent investigators have concluded that Governor Cuomo sexually harassed multiple women and, in doing so, broke the law," James said when she released the report.
Her official announcement launching her run for governor comes just a day after Cuomo was charged with forcible touching, a misdemeanor sex crime. Those charges stem from a complaint documented in the report and filed with the Albany County Sheriff's office by Brittany Commisso, who worked as an executive assistant to the then governor. Cuomo continues to deny any wrongdoing.
James began her career in elected office in 2004, after successfully winning an election in the 35th City Council district, which includes parts of Fort Greene, Prospect Heights, Bedford Stuyvesant and Crown Heights in Brooklyn. She ran on the Working Families Party line and was the first candidate to win elected office in New York City on a third party ballot line since the 1970’s, according to The New York Times.
She defeated Geoffrey A. Davis, the brother of Council member James Davis, who was fatally shot 14 times at City Hall in July 2003. James ran a campaign focused on rising housing costs and opposition to high profile development projects like the Atlantic Yards site, which ultimately became the Barclays Center, a revamped transit hub and 16 buildings for residential and commercial uses. Her position reportedly softened as the development took shape.
While in Council, she chaired the Economic Development and Sanitation Committees and developed a reputation for being an outspoken critic of the Bloomberg administration both bringing attention to the massive fraud scheme related to the CityTime payroll system, and as a vocal critic of the efforts to extend term limits, even suing unsuccessfully to try to block the measure. She ultimately ran and won a third Council term in 2009.
Former City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who was the first woman and openly gay person to hold that role, said James as a Council member was much like James as state attorney general.
“She was dogged, focused and goal-oriented and she usually made it to what that goal was, and that goal usually focused squarely on the needs of her district and the poor and low-income people in the five boroughs,” Quinn said.
As someone who also ran unsuccessfully in 2013 to be the city’s first woman and openly gay mayor, Quinn said there was something hopeful about the gains being made by women in New York with two prominent women jumping in first in the race for governor. Governor Kathy Hochul is also actively running for re-election.
“That said, we had a lot of women run for mayor of the city of New York and none of them won. So being a candidate is step one. Winning is step two,” Quinn added.
Any path to victory is premised on the relationships a candidate has built over time, and James’s relationships run deep. Basil Smikle, a long-time political consultant, former chair of the New York State Democratic Party and now head of the Public Policy program at Hunter College, said he has known James since the mid-1990s when he was introduced to her when was working as a lawyer for the Brooklyn Democratic Party.
“I’ve always known her to be really thoughtful, incredibly smart, really passionate about Brooklyn, about people and about serving,” said Smikle. “That’s kind of the way she carried herself through the ranks of Brooklyn politics,” he added.
In the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder by police in Minneapolis in May 2020, Smikle was teaching at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and hosted a discussion featuring James in conversation with Marilyn Mosby, the state’s attorney for Baltimore, Maryland, focused on how to build trust between police and community. From that conversation, James was asked to become a lecturer at the school and taught a class with Smikle last spring.
The class was over-enrolled. “I think the cut-off was like 30 students and they were at least twice that. It was really hard to tell the students no,” said Smikle, noting that James brought in several guest lecturers including many of the city’s Democratic mayoral candidates.
While James will immediately face questions from those loyal to Cuomo and those already aligning with his successor, Governor Hochul, the fact that she has also already won election to statewide office makes her a serious contender.
“For a Black woman to be elected statewide is not a political fluke,” said Christina Greer, associate professor of political science at Fordham University.
While Hochul has already stacked up top tier endorsements from groups like the fundraising powerhouse Emily’s List, which supports pro-choice Democratic women candidates, Greer said you can’t overlook James’ relationship to unions and what her decision to run means in the overall shifting of the political deckchairs for higher office.
Greer compared it to when James left the Public Advocate’s office after winning her bid for state attorney general, which opened the door for a candidate like Council member Jumaane Williams to run for a citywide post. (Williams is also eyeing a run for governor.)
By running for governor, James takes herself out of contention for running for re-election as state attorney general opening up an opportunity to many others, including current elected officials across the city and state who would not have sought to challenge her.
Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez, Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz, Deputy State Senate Majority Leader Michael Gianaris and law professor Zephyr Teachout are all names that have come up as potential state attorney general candidates. Gonzalez would be the first Latino elected statewide if he were to mount a successful campaign.
“There’s a very clear path for Tish James,” Greer said, noting that if she is elected, “not only would she be making a historic first, she’d be opening the door for other historic firsts.”
