Yang’s presidential candidacy ended earlier this year, and he spent time as a CNN contributor after leaving the election campaign. By the time he ended his campaign, Yang said he had no plans to run for mayor in New York, where he has lived for almost 25 years.
Yang is already joining a field of dozens of mayoral candidates, according to city records. Candidates are all competing to take command of a pandemic-stricken city, where unemployment is skyrocketing, poverty and hunger are growing, and a budget crisis on the horizon could force the next mayor to make deep cuts in jobs and services. Public sector.
Mostly unknown outside tech circles before the 2020 primaries, Yang won the affection – if not always the votes – of Democrats who appreciated his personality as a happy warrior on the stage of the debate and election campaign. And he was supported by supporters called “Gang Yang”, who helped him raise $ 40 million over the course of his race – including an astonishing $ 16.5 million as the race heated up in the final three months of 2019.
The former technology executive pushed the idea of a Universal Basic Income into the mainstream of political conversations during his presidential race. After leaving the race, he founded Humanity Forward, a nonprofit organization that he used to test some of the ideas that animated his campaign, such as UBI. In March, he began giving hundreds of working families in New York $ 1,000 a month to determine the effectiveness of such a program. The organization also endorsed voting candidates across the country.