Jim Walden, a lawyer with a string of high-profile cases but little name recognition, is running as an independent. In a moment of political upheaval, anything seems possible.
Jim Walden, a lawyer with a string of high-profile cases but little name recognition, is running as an independent. In a moment of political upheaval, anything seems possible.
Jim Walden, a lawyer with a string of high-profile cases but little name recognition, is running as an independent. In a moment of political upheaval, anything seems possible.
When Eric Adams was indicted on federal corruption charges last fall, resulting in the city of New York being left more or less unmanaged, Jim Walden decided to run for mayor. It was a quixotic idea, one in which even his family did not see an instant logic.
While it was true that Idris Elba had played a version of him in the film “Molly’s Game,” the character was not, in fact, named “Jim Walden.” Beyond the members of the American College of Trial Lawyers and the mob guys he consistently relocated from high ranches in Staten Island to the low-rise federal penal system, Mr. Walden remained largely unknown.
The first question for New Yorkers, he reasoned during an evening with potential supporters in a Brooklyn Heights townhouse a few weeks ago, was surely “ ‘Who is Jim Walden?’ ” The gathering was one of 85 he had planned all over the city through mid-March in the hope of answering that question sufficiently enough to quickly raise the money that would qualify him for the New York City Campaign Finance Board’s matching funds program. In this instance, the crowd — wealthy, well-connected, civic-minded — was familiar with him. Mr. Walden and his wife and children live a few blocks away. With a view of Manhattan as his backdrop, he laid out the path by which he believes he can become mayor as an independent.
The answer to the question “Who is Jim Walden” is not easily distilled. When he announced his candidacy in late November, he was flanked by older firefighters — he has the support of the union representing retired municipal workers — and also Jonovia Chase, a Black trans activist. For several years, Mr. Walden served in the U.S. attorney’s office in the Eastern District, where he put away Anthony Spero, a Bonanno crime boss. Like many prosecutors, he is profoundly opposed to any vilification of the police. At the same time, he told me, he would not permit federal immigration agents in city jails, something Mr. Adams said he is preparing an executive order to allow.
“It’s just a bad public policy to basically announce to all of the prisoners, ‘Hey, those of you who are illegal, ICE is coming for you!’ They know they are going back to a country where there may be extreme violence, where there may be a price on their head,” he said. “You just don’t want collateral enforcement in the secure domain of a jail,” the risk of rioting and needless violence being too great.
When I asked people who have attended the Walden talks what they came away with, they remarked on his air of competence and his personal story, which can seem self-mythologizing and contrived to inspire but has the virtue of being true. Mr. Walden grew up poor in Levittown, Pa., enduring the torments of an alcoholic father. After high school, he moved into a friend’s basement. He dropped out of community college. When a high school friend, Sara Silver, came home for Thanksgiving break from Yale, she was determined to see Mr. Walden get into a four-year college.