Brad Lander was on stage at his mayoral primary watch party Tuesday night when he found out that Andrew Cuomo had conceded the race. The City comptroller stepped back from the podium, slid off his taupe-colored jacket, unbuttoned and slowly rolled up his sleeves, and then directed his son to begin a crowd chant: "Good-bye Cuo-mo! Good-bye Cuo-mo!"
Earlier that night, as it became clear Cuomo was losing, Lander dropped an indulgent F-bomb into the mic. "Andrew Cuomo is in the past. He is not the future or present of New York City. Good fucking riddance!"
It was an emboldened Brad. A fighting Brad. A Brad that curses and gets arrested by the feds. A Brad that we feel like we're only just starting to get to know. Over the past two weeks, we seemed to watch the comptroller evolve in front of our eyes—from a competent, measured civil servant who releases painstakingly detailed reports, to a ball-busting, rollercoaster-riding mayoral candidate who practices civil disobedience and swears like a pirate.
Lander's public persona seemed to shift about mid-June, when a flailing campaign received a needed media boost. First, a grab-bag of variously annoying and irrelevant New Yorkers endorsed Lander in the New York Times. An endorsement from Ezra Klein followed. Then, with training from his son, he says, he eviscerated Cuomo at the second mayoral debate. "You've never taken responsibility for a single thing you've done wrong in your entire life," he told a sputtering Cuomo. "Not one single thing. You should try it sometime."
Who was this sassy man we were seeing on stage?