The Public Advocate Race
The Real Thing Versus The Phony
By Arthur Schwartz
In Village View we have published fairly even-handed compendiums of candidates for mayor, comptroller, borough president of Manhattan, and District 2 City Council. One last race needs to be discussed, but there is no way to be even-handed. It is the race for public advocate, which features two candidates: Jumaane Willliams, who has held the office since 2019, and Jennifer Rajkumar, an assembly member from Queens.
Jumaane Williams—The Real Thing
Williams is a first-generation Brooklynite of Grenadian heritage. He was diagnosed with Tourette Syndrome and ADHD as a teenager, persevering as he came up through the public school system to earn a master’s in urban studies from Brooklyn College in 2005. He began his career as a community organizer by serving as the assistant director for the Greater Flatbush Beacon School, then later as executive director of New York State Tenants & Neighbors, where he fought for truly affordable housing.
In 2009, he defeated an incumbent to begin his career as an activist elected official in the New York City Council. In that position, he authored more bills than any other member. In June 2013, the City Council passed Williams’s Community Safety Act, which established an Inspector General to oversee the New York Police Department (NYPD) and created an enforceable ban against bias-based profiling. The Act was passed over Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s veto. Williams was an opponent of the NYPD’s approach to stop-and-frisk, which a federal court ruled to be unconstitutional. In June 2015, Mayor Bill de Blasio signed Williams’ legislation, the Fair Chance Act, commonly known as Ban the Box. The law prohibits employers from inquiring about an applicant’s criminal history until a conditional offer of employment is made.
As co-chair of the Council’s Task Force to Combat Gun Violence, Williams helped launch New York’s Crisis Management System, which funds Cure Violence Groups that work to reduce shootings through a multi-pronged, community-centered approach. As chairperson of the Council’s Housing and Buildings Committee, he challenged the de Blasio administration’s inadequate affordable housing plan by advocating for more deeply affordable housing to help prevent communities from being priced out of the five boroughs.
In 2019 he won a Special Election for Public Advocate by a wide margin in a field of 18 candidates. He was re-elected in 2021. Since becoming public advocate, the second-highest ranking office in New York City, Williams has empowered staff to prioritize community engagement, outreach, and service. He has also passed more legislation in office than all previous public advocates combined, including key bills that protect New Yorkers in the workplace and those looking for work, shield struggling homeowners from undue tax burdens, increase public safety, and fight discrimination in our housing systems.
Throughout his over decade of service in government, Williams never stopped standing with marginalized communities to fight for justice and equity for all, and has never been afraid to put his body on the line. He has been arrested more than any other sitting elected official in New York, standing up for women’s rights, immigration rights, housing rights, and more.
As public advocate, Williams has also taken to the courts to press prominent issues. Last August he was lead plaintiff in a successful lawsuit which prevented the MTA from cutting 1,000 bus runs a day. Williams, understanding how hard it is to succeed with a disability, has been a leading advocate for the rights of people with disabilities.
He is married and has a three-year-old son.
Jennifer Rajkumar—The Phony
A Rajkumar Campaign Piece
Every few years we have candidates, like George Santos, who run on phony resumes. This year’s George Santos Prize goes to Jennifer Rajkumar. This much we know is real: she is not the daughter of poor Indian immigrants. She is the daughter of two Indian immigrants who were successful physicians. She grew up in Tarrytown where she attended the Hackley School, a private college preparatory school. She then attended the University of Pennsylvania and Stanford Law School. In 2011 she was elected as Democratic District Leader for the 66th Assembly District Part B (I am the DL for Part A). She then ran an unsuccessful race for City Council in 2013 and another unsuccessful race for Assembly in 2016. In 2017 Governor Cuomo appointed her Director of Immigration Affairs and Special Counsel for the New York Department of State. When Cuomo resigned, she left too. She then moved to an Indian American community in Queens where she won an election for an open Assembly seat in 2020. In May 2020, City & State criticized Rajkumar alongside a slate of other candidates for carpetbagging across multiple primaries and elections.
An Anti-Rajkumar mailing
Rajkumar only worked for one year as a practicing lawyer, but her literature describes her as a “Civil Rights Lawyer fighting corporate fraud, championing women, workers, and justice nationwide.” Try as I might, I could not find Rajkumar’s name on one filed lawsuit, either in New York or in the federal courts. At a candidate forum, I asked her to name one case that she litigated – and she could not come up with an answer. Last year she was honored by the Queens County Trial Lawyers Association and told them that she “practiced nationally as a civil rights lawyer, litigating class action cases on behalf of workers, tenants and women,” and that she worked on the legal team of Velez v. Novartis, a case ranked by the United Nations in the top 10 worldwide for “advancing women’s equality.” But that case was brought in 2006, and Rajkumar was admitted to the NY Bar in 2009; her name appears nowhere in the case filings.
In 2010 a law firm solicited her to be a plaintiff in a class action against Gateway Plaza in Battery Park City, where she lived. She took the lawsuit, placed her name on it as the plaintiff and the lawyer and filed it herself, under the name of the firm she worked at for one year. When the firm which had sent her the pleading found out, they sued her firm, and she had to dismiss the case. The Gateway Plaza Tenants Association leaders denounced what she did and she lost her job.
The final phony advertising? Her campaign lit says “Professor at CUNY.” For a short while she taught one course as an adjunct at Lehman College. Move over George Santos!
