Corey Johnson Weighing Run For NYC Mayor

NEW YORK — City Council Speaker Corey Johnson on Monday declared his interest in running for mayor and pledged to place strict fundraising limits on his own campaign.

Johnson — a Chelsea Democrat who is also the city's acting public advocate for another month — is "thinking about a potential people-powered Mayoral run," he said on Twitter. If he decides to launch a campaign, Johnson would join what's likely to be a crowded field in 2021 to replace Mayor Bill de Blasio, who must leave office because of term limits.

Johnson also said he would stick to self-imposed fundraising rules much stricter than what the law requires. He said he will not accept money from lobbyists, real estate developers or corporate political action committees, and won't take more than $250 from any individual even though the city would allow individual donations as large as $2,000.

"I think [there is] a lot of anxiety in New York City about gentrification and over development and people don’t like any appearance of influence based off of contributions," Johnson told The New York Times. "This is a way to totally eliminate that."

Johnson's campaign was getting an average of one contribution per minute in the hours after he announced his consideration of a mayoral bid, he said on Twitter.

Now in his second year as the first openly gay and HIV-positive speaker, Johnson is just the latest potential entrant into a citywide race that is still more than two years away.

Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. has thrown his hat in the ring, and Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams and City Comptroller Scott Stringer are both considering bids, according to news reports.

Both Stringer and Johnson plan to host house party fundraisers soon as they weigh runs under the city's new campaign-finance rules, the Times reported.

The rules, which voters approved in November, strengthened the city's matching program for small donations and lowered the limits for individual donations to $2,000 for citywide offices. Candidates in 2021 may opt to run under the old rules, which have a higher individual limit of $5,100 for citywide offices.

Johnson has become an increasingly visible public figure in his tenure has the Council's leader. He helped lead a successful push to fund MetroCard discounts for poor New Yorkers and has been a vocal critic of the deal to bring Amazon to Long Island City. On Monday he launched a five-borough survey of the city's bus system, which follows a similar subway survey he took up earlier this month.

(Lead image: City Council Speaker Corey Johnson is seen on Jan. 24, 2019. Photo by John McCarten/New York City Council)