Jumaane Williams, Jenifer Rajkumar, and Marty Dolan are the three Democratic contenders for this cycle’s NYC public advocate election.
Photos by Dean Moses, ET Rodriguez, and courtesy of the Dolan campaign
In the race for New York City’s public advocate — the city government’s main elected watchdog who serves in a non-voting capacity on the City Council and sits first in the mayoral line of succession — a primary challenge to incumbent Jumaane Williams is heating up ahead of the city’s Democratic primary election on June 24.
Assembly Member Jenifer Rajkumar, who represents Queens’ 38th district, and Marty Dolan, a retired insurance executive from the Bronx, are challenging Williams, who is running for his second and final four-year term as public advocate.
The role of public advocate lies largely in its name. It serves primarily as a liaison between constituents and city government and aims to advocate for the public’s needs. In addition to sitting on the City Council in a nonvoting role with the ability to introduce legislation, the public advocate investigates residents’ complaints and concerns about city operations and public services and may propose solutions or alternatives to city leadership.
As an independently elected government watchdog, the public advocate monitors the compliance of other elected officials with the New York City Charter and serves as chair of the Commission of Public Information and Communication. Along with the mayor and comptroller, the public advocate is one of three municipal offices elected by the entire voting population of New York City.
Though the race for public advocate receives little public polling, an Emerson College poll published in late May showed Williams leading with a commanding 56% of respondents selecting him as their first choice, with Rajkumar polling at 15% and Dolan at 13%. The Emerson poll reported that 16% of respondents were undecided in their first choice.
Though the May poll showed Rajkumar and Dolan trailing significantly, Rajkumar has out-fundraised both Dolan and Williams, having brought in roughly $475,000 in private funds and almost $1.5 million in public funds. Williams has raised about $356,000 in private funds and almost $1.2 million in public funds, while Dolan has brought in just $52,000 in private funds. With 14 days left in the race, Williams has outspent Rajkumar by about $10,000 and has $674,000 left in the campaign’s balance compared to Rajkumar’s $1.17 million, according to the NYC Campaign Finance Board.
The Democratic nominee for NYC public advocate, who will likely be expected to win in the general election as the majority of NYC voters are Democrats, will be selected via ranked-choice voting.
Below, amNewYork walks through the three candidates in the 2025 public advocate Democratic primary election.
Jumaane Williams
The sitting New York City public advocate, Williams is running for his second and last four-year term in the position. Williams was elected public advocate in 2019 through special election after Letitia James resigned from the position to become attorney general.
Williams has been in NYC politics since 2010, having served on the New York City Council as a member from the 45th district from 2010 through 2019 until his election as public advocate. During his time on City Council, Williams unsuccessfully ran against Kathy Hochul for lieutenant governor of New York in 2018. After completing the end of James’ term, Williams won reelection for public advocate in 2021 and went on to run an unsuccessful campaign for governor in 2022, once again losing to Hochul.
Williams is from Brooklyn and, as a Council Member, participated in the Occupy Wall Street movement in the early 2010s. Williams has focused his campaign on affordability, government transparency, criminal justice, and gun violence prevention and has pointed to his record as public advocate as evidence that he’s up for another four years in office.
In his time as public advocate, Williams has passed more legislation than the previous public advocates combined — the role was created in 1993 — a metric he points to frequently to illustrate his office’s efficacy. He has focused much of his campaign on critiques of Mayor Eric Adams, whom Williams thinks has failed to deliver for New Yorkers. Williams described his style in an April interview with Spectrum News as an “intersection of activism and actually getting things done legislatively.”
At a Thursday debate against Rajkumar, Williams identified President Donald Trump and Adams as threats to New York City, urging voters to support an advocate “that you know will stand up for you transparently and with courage.” The debate came just one day after a report surfaced about allegations of a toxic work environment in Williams’ office.
Jenifer Rajkumar
Rajkumar launched her campaign for public advocate in January after initially announcing a run for comptroller. Rajkumar is the first South Asian-American woman to be elected to the State Assembly.
In 2017, then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo — who is now narrowly leading the race to Gracie Mansion — appointed Rajkumar as the Director of Immigration Affairs and Special Counsel for the New York Department of State. Elected to the State Assembly in 2020, Rajkumar has authored and helped pass legislation aiming to shut down illegal smoke shops in NYC and helped pass a legislative package outlining full protections for domestic workers under New York’s state human rights law.
Rajkumar unsuccessfully ran for City Council in 2013 and State Assembly in 2016 before her election to the State Assembly. Before politics, she was a practicing civil rights lawyer and a political science professor at CUNY’s Lehman College in the Bronx. In the State Assembly, she chairs the Subcommittee on Diversity in Law and sits on the judiciary, veterans’ affairs, aging, consumer affairs, and small business committees.
Rajkumar has called for a “complete overhaul” of the city’s government, which she said is “in crisis” at Thursday’s debate. Rajkumar has been a close ally of Adams’ for years and served as a senior advisor on Adams’ transition team in 2021. Earlier in her campaign, Rajkumar faced criticism for a cartoon ad depicting Williams asleep and apparently high on edibles. Williams, who is Black, has called the ad racist.
At Thursday’s debate, Rajkumar identified mental health, public safety, and affordability as some of her main priorities. Williams said at the debate that Rajkumar was unaware of the specific duties of the office of public advocate, which Rajkumar said was “misogynistic and condescending.”
Marty Dolan
Running the lowest-performing campaign of the three candidates for public advocate thus far, Dolan is making another pitch for public office after unsuccessfully challenging Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-Bronx/Queens) for her Congressional seat in the 2024 Democratic primary.
Dolan is a retired financial analyst and has said that he hopes to apply his experience with domestic and international financial systems to public office. Dolan has called for voters to clean house in NYC’s highest elected offices, urging the electorate to vote out Adams, Williams, and Comptroller Brad Lander.
“We need to confront incompetence at City Hall along with the dishonest Socialist mentality of trying to make everyone happy, which instead has made the majority of New Yorkers worse off,” Dolan said when he announced his campaign for public advocate.
When Dolan ran against Ocasio-Cortez in 2024, he lost by 64 percentage points, and in his campaign for public advocate, he has not qualified for matching public donation funds or debates.
When he ran for Congress, Dolan advocated for a “back-to-basics strategy” for local NYC leadership, urging local elected officials to deprioritize the war in Gaza as a central issue in their campaigns and roles. If elected, public advocate will be Dolan’s first elected role.
