New York City

NYC mayoral candidate Jim Walden mulls run as Republican

Law and order candidate won’t change any policies, he declares

February 3, 2025 Mary Frost
New York City mayoral candidate Jim Walden — a long-time political independent — is mulling a run as a Republican. Photo courtesy of Jim Walden
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CITYWIDE — New York City mayoral candidate Jim Walden — a long-time political independent — is mulling running as a Republican.

Walden, a Brooklyn resident, officially launched his candidacy at a rally in Downtown Brooklyn in November. An attorney and hard-hitting former prosecutor with a squeaky-clean reputation, Walden told the Brooklyn Eagle on Monday that he has until Feb. 14 to make a decision.

“I am in conversations with Republicans as we speak,” he said. “I’ve got ten days to figure out what to do. I will continue taking those meetings, and I will probably come to a decision not before the 14th of February.”

Walden, a moderate running as a corruption-buster, has never been a member of the Republican Party, having quit the Democratic Party in 2006 and remaining unaffiliated ever since. A law signed in January 2023 by Gov. Kathy Hochul, however, disallows candidates from using the word “independent” on the ballot, and the Independence Party of New York lacks the requisite 130,000 voters to appear on the ballot. Walden filed a lawsuit on First- and Fourteenth-Amendment grounds, but doubts the decision will come in on time.  

“Technically, the briefing is done on Feb. 7, four days from now, but I don’t know that there is going to be a decision by the time I have to make a decision on the 14th,” Walden said. Even if he wins the lawsuit, he may try to run on three party lines: Republican, Conservative and Independent, he said.

Mayoral candidate Jim Walden. Photo: Mary Frost, Brooklyn Eagle
Mayoral candidate Jim Walden. Photo: Mary Frost, Brooklyn Eagle

Thinks voters are ready for a change

Walden thinks the city’s voters are ready for a tough-on-crime moderate who is also a strong supporter of civil rights.

“We’ve had a lot of Republican mayors and people who have run on the Republican line in this city’s history,” Walden noted. While Mayor Rudy Giuliani “hasn’t aged well, in someways [Mayor Michael] Bloomberg has aged extremely well,” he said. “It’s kind of like a cycle. Democrats get in control, they do a terrible job, and then voters make a switch. And if you really look at the election map the way I have, on an election-district by election-district level, there’s just a lot of purple, even in the city.” 

Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Photo: Caroline Ourso/Brooklyn Eagle
Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Photo: Caroline Ourso/Brooklyn Eagle

Cuomo ‘told me himself’

Walden shared that he knew former Gov. Andrew Cuomo had planned to run in the city’s mayoral race before it became the common scuttlebutt. Cuomo, the metaphorical 600-pound political gorilla in the room, has not yet formally announced, but early polls show him leading the Democratic pack despite high negatives, according to Politico.

“I knew two things before I joined the race,” Walden said. “One, I knew that Andrew Cuomo was going to be coming in because he told me himself. And two, that there were a lot of people who were disaffected and sick of the poor quality of the candidates that have come out of the Democratic machine.”

Walden has pledged to clean up corruption and “get the grifters out of City Hall.” On Jan. 3 he received the endorsement of 58 former top federal and local prosecutors, who extolled his integrity and his history of “building numerous successful cases against mobsters, narcotics traffickers and other lawbreakers.” He has also been receiving strong support from many of the groups he has represented in court, including city retirees,  firefighters and transsexuals, and is building a strong campaign war chest.

With this kind of backing, he doubts putting an “R” next to his name in the ballot will turn off his core supporters. 

“I think people just want good government, regardless of who the party is, and they don’t have any alternatives,” Walden said. “There’s literally not one person in the race that they can trust, other than me, to focus on one thing and one thing only — which is running a city government where the priorities are pocketbook issues, safety [and] governing from the center, with the standard being a standard of excellence, not bare mediocrity. I think that people are hungry for that.”

This 2014 file photo shows attorney Jim Walden. Photo by Rob Abruzzese
This 2014 file photo shows attorney Jim Walden. Photo by Rob Abruzzese

Cooperating with the White House?

Can a crusader for human rights also cooperate with the Trump Administration?

Walden says he’s been very clear on his stance. “I want to cooperate with Washington where I can, and where I can’t, I am the right person to know the power of the courts to push back,” he told the Eagle. A centrist will have more credibility with the administration, he feels.

“I believe the criminal element of the migrant population clearly needs to go. I thought that getting the concession from Venezuela to take back their narco-terrorists was an important moment for all of us. But at the same time, I don’t want families broken up, and I want us to deal with the population individually and not in mass round-ups. I think if that’s our goal as New Yorkers, it’s better to have someone that the administration can work with, as opposed to someone that’s simply going to ‘fight, fight, fight.’“

If a fight is unavoidable, however, “I will respectfully direct council to file litigation in federal or state court, depending on where it’s needed, in order to protect New York values. At the end of the day, I don’t see it as some huge slap in the face to file a lawsuit to try to protect peoples’ rights, and I’ve done it my whole career,” Walden said.

Noted attorney Jim Walden officially launched his campaign for mayor of New York City in November. Photo: Will Hasty, Brooklyn Eagle
Noted attorney Jim Walden officially launched his campaign for mayor of New York City in November. Photo: Will Hasty, Brooklyn Eagle

‘Still the same Jim Walden’

Walden says none of his stances will change as a result of running as a Republican, if that’s how it works out. He will still be fighting “100%” to keep traditional Medicare coverage for city employees, he said, and will continue to defend LGBTQ and transsexual rights

“It’s one of the reasons I so clearly embraced the LGBTQ and trans community, because if I decided to run as a Republican, I did not want there to be any doubt about the fact that my policies were not going to change,” he said.

“I am still the same Jim Walden, and I’m always going to be the same Jim Walden,” he said. “Honestly, if I went into one of these meetings with a Republican leader and they said, ‘We are not going to back you unless you do A, B, & C, and A, B, or C was inconsistent with my policies or my morals, I would politely say, ‘Thanks and good luck,’ and I’ll stay in the lane that I started as.”





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