New York City educators are divided between two very different candidates in the upcoming mayoral primary — Zohran Mamdani and Andrew Cuomo — and the split made it impossible for the union to endorse anyone, union president Michael Mulgrew said in an interview.
The United Federation of Teachers announced Friday they would not be endorsing and, in an interview with Gothamist, Mulgrew said the primary is one of the most “polarizing” he’s seen.
“There is no consensus among our members,” Mulgrew said, adding that most of the union’s Mamdani supporters indicated they would never back Cuomo, while most Cuomo supporters were vehemently opposed to Mamdani. “Both sides were completely dug in.”
Mamdani, a democratic socialist and relative newcomer to city politics, has been gaining momentum throughout his campaign and is within striking distance of former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who entered the race as a prohibitive favorite, according to polls.
Educators’ top concerns in internal polls, surveys and conversations were good governance, affordability and defending the city from Trump administration policies, Mulgrew said. Those who prioritized “running the city” backed Cuomo, while those who cared most about affordability backed Mamdani.
At the same time, many members remain furious with Cuomo for the cuts to public workers’ pensions he championed as governor more than a decade ago, according to Mulgrew, and many were put off by the scandals that led to his resignation.
Members are also divided on Israel and Gaza Mulgrew said. Mamdani has called the war a genocide and said the Israeli government is committing war crimes. Mulgrew said some teachers have refused to get behind him because of that.
Education has not been a top priority in the mayor’s race, even though the mayor controls public schools serving more than 900,000 students and an education budget of $40 billion. Mulgrew said even educators do not view education as their top concern right now.
He said members cited crime, transit and housing as their biggest issues, but an overall theme was governance.
“The number one issue was ‘fix the city,’” he said.
Mulgrew, who has been the union’s president since 2009, recently faced a contested election of his own, but won his sixth term last month with 54% of the vote. He said unifying the membership as much as he can is “part of the job description.”
“We’re a union. The whole idea is to bring people together,” Mulgrew said. “There’s no perfect agreement on anything and never will be … but there was no way to get to a consensus.”
The powerful union has 200,000 members, including teachers, counselors, occupational and physical therapists, and secretaries. The last time it did not endorse a candidate in the Democratic primary was 2009. In 2013 it endorsed Bill Thompson, followed by Bill de Blasio in 2017, and Scott Stringer in 2021.
The union held a mayoral forum last month, and asked all candidates to spend a day in a public school classroom. It has made increasing pay for paraprofessionals, improving retirement benefits, and enacting new class size limits top educational priorities.
“When the number one issue is education we can usually find a candidate,” Mulgrew said, adding, “All of the workers are saying we’re fed up with the way the city’s being run.”
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