Former NYC Veterans Chief Launches Run For Mayor

NEW YORK — Loree Sutton, a former Army officer who served as New York City's veterans services commissioner, became the third woman to enter the 2021 mayoral race Thursday.

Sutton, a retired brigadier general who was once the Army's highest-ranking psychiatrist, led Mayor Bill de Blasio's Department of Veterans Services until her retirement from that post last month.

She launched a bid to replace her former boss on Thursday, a day after opening a state campaign account to support her run, with a two-and-a-half-minute video highlighting her career of military and government service.

"It is precisely my experience in working with veterans and their families, whose issues span virtually every challenge faced by all New Yorkers, that I am prepared to lead," Sutton, 60, said in the video interspersed with shots of her walking around the city. "I believe there's nothing wrong with our city that can't be fixed with what's right with our city."

De Blasio, a Democrat, first tapped Sutton to lead what was then the Mayor's Office of Veterans Affairs in August 2014. She stayed on to helm the Department of Veterans Services, the city's first new mayoral agency in two decades, after it was established in 2016.

In that role, Sutton helped drive down veteran street homelessness more than 90 percent as the city continued to grapple with a persistent homelessness crisis. Her tenure also saw veterans named a protected class in the city's human rights law and the creation of an outeach team that touched more than 25,000 service members, veterans and families, city officials have said.

Sutton joins two other women vying to be the city's first female mayor: nonprofit CEO Dianne Morales and contracting executive Jocelyn Taylor. Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. has reportedly said he is in also in the race, while City Council Speaker Corey Johnson, Comptroller Scott Stringer and Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams are expected to run.

Sutton is not as well known as any of those potential candidates. But she has early financial support from the real estate magnate Ken Fisher of the eponymous Fisher Brothers firm, according to The New York Times.

"Instead of demonizing businesses and corporations as a whole, she sees the value of bringing the public and private together," Fisher told The Times.

Sutton's alliance with Fisher could become a flashpoint at a time when a growing number of city politicans have pledged to refuse money from the real estate industry. But that does not appear to be a widespread practice among leading mayoral contenders — while Johnson has said he will not take real estate money, Stringer, Diaz and Adams have received big checks from the industry, according to the New York Daily News.

Watch Sutton's launch video below.