Yang’s presidential bid ended earlier this year, and he spent time as a CNN contributor after leaving the campaign trail. When he ended his campaign, Yang had said he had no plans to become mayor in New York, where he has lived for almost 25 years.
According to city registers, Yang is already joining a field of dozens of mayoral candidates. The contenders are all vying to take charge of a pandemic city where unemployment is soaring, poverty and hunger are on the rise, and a budget deficit on the horizon could force the next mayor to cut deep cuts on public sector jobs and services .
Largely unknown outside of tech circles before the 2020 primaries, Yang won the affection – if not always the votes – of Democrats who appreciated his lucky warrior personality on the debate stage and campaign trail. And he was backed by supporters named “Yang Gang” who helped him raise $ 40 million during his run – including a surprising $ 16.5 million as the race warmed up in the last three months of 2019.
The former tech manager pushed the idea of a universal basic income into the mainstream of political talks during his presidential run. After leaving the race, he founded Humanity Forward, a non-profit organization he used to test some of the ideas from 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 approved down-voting candidates across the country.