Former Obama official launches campaign for NYC mayor

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Shaun Donovan, the former Secretary of Urban Housing and Development and budget director under the Obama administration, launched his campaign for New York City mayor on Tuesday.

In a Zoom event at the Bronx's Via Verde Housing Development, which was timed with the release of a promotional video, Donovan said that mayors are what make America run. 

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The Democrat promised viewers that he would take the subway to work every day, proposing so-called "15-minute neighborhoods" where residents have no more than a 15-minute walk in any direction to access fresh food, schools, transit, and a public park.

Donovan, 54, also told reporters that the city was asking the police department to do too much and said he supported an appeals court decision to let more than 200 men continue to stay at the Lucerne Hotel on the city's Upper West Side.

Donovan, who was also previously former Mayor Mike Bloomberg's housing commissioner, focused on inequality and highlighted the plight of the disenfranchised in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic during his more than two-minute campaign ad.

"While this pandemic has hurt everyone, it's disproportionately devastated our most vulnerable communities," the native New Yorker said. "Growing up here, I remember watching neighborhoods burn. Shocked and angered that we could allow such extreme poverty in a city with so much wealth."

Nearly one in every 106 New Yorkers in of a city of more than 8.3 million is homeless, and nearly 4,000 people sleep in public spaces, according to The Bowery Mission.

Donovan said he had entered a life of public service hoping to be a part of the solution, to fight for affordable housing, and to narrow inequality. 

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"President Barack Obama asked me to serve as his secretary of urban housing and development. And later, to manage the $4 trillion federal budget," he said. "We worked side-by-side to deal with some of the greatest crises our nation has ever faced."

Under the Obama administration, the homeless crisis waned, seeing double-digit drops in homeless families, people and veterans since 2010, according to the 2016 Annual Homeless Assessment Report.

Some states had increases in homelessness, but the figure of those experiencing homelessness on a single night in 2016 fell 14% in the same timeframe, Bloomberg reported in November.

Nevertheless, positive HOPE Survey results from January of this year can no longer paint an accurate picture due to COVID-19 and Donovan called for the rebuilding of the city: a "new version of New York" where all residents have the right to a bed, home, good job that supports their family, and good education for their kids. 

The video, which focused on an animated television screen, then played a clip from Obama's 2008 Iowa Caucus speech. 

"'Hope is not blind optimism," Obama, an Illinois senator at the time, had said. "It's not sitting on the sidelines or shirking from a fight. Hope is the belief that our destiny will not be written for us, but by us."

Donovan chimes in and the screen then focuses on footage of him. 

"A new vision for the future of our city must be born out of this crisis," he said. "One that reimagines a city that works for everyone."

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Support for Donovan is widespread and the candidate managed to outraise the rest of the 2021 field combined. Current Mayor Bill de Blasio must step down from his position because of term limits.

In a summer campaign finance filing period, Donovan raised $662,000 and the other 11 candidates raised just $594,000, according to City & State New York. 

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Other members participating in the June primary include Brooklyn Councilmember Carlos Menchaca, City Comptroller Scott Stringer, Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams and Maya Wiley, a former adviser to de Blasio.

Donovan describes himself as a progressive. But neither his career nor his education screams "outsider." 

Donovan was raised in Manhattan and now lives in a Brooklyn brownstone. He attended the private Dalton School before earning a bachelor’s and master's degree from Harvard University, according to The Associated Press.