CACF's Hosts Mayoral Forum Focused On Issues Impacting NYC's Diverse AAPI Community

CACF’s Co-Executive Directors Vanessa Leung (left) and Anita Gundanna open the 2025 AAPI Mayoral Forum.

Candidates Adrienne Adams, Michael Blake, Brad Lander, Jessica Ramos, and Scott Stringer spoke directly to the community on education, public safety, and healthcare access in New York City

New York, NY (June 3, 2025) — On the eve of the first official debate in the New York City Mayor’s race, nearly 300 Asian American and Pacific Islander voters packed the New York Law School auditorium for CACF’s 2025 Mayoral Forum.

Candidates Adrienne Adams, Michael Blake, Brad Lander, Jessica Ramos, and Scott Stringer participated in the forum, which was organized by the Coalition for Asian American Children and Families (CACF) and its member organizations and moderated by PIX11 anchor Shirley Chan. The forum was also livestreamed by PIX11, the forum’s official media partner. Viewers can watch a replay of the forum HERE and photos from the event can be downloaded from this folder.

“The enthusiasm and attentiveness of the audience at our Mayoral Forum demonstrated what CACF has long known — that New York City’s AAPI communities are a force too powerful to ignore, particularly during this upcoming mayoral election,” said CACF’s Co-Executive Directors Anita Gundanna and Vanessa Leung. “NYC’s AAPI communities are not a monolith, and our coalition members ensured voters would get to hear from the candidates about their plans on how to ensure New Yorkers are getting their healthcare access, language access services, and safety needs met — especially at a time when cuts to federal funding may be on the horizon.”

Simultaneous interpretation of the forum was offered in Cantonese, Korean, Mandarin and Urdu.

Below are excerpts of the candidates’ responses to the Forum’s first question, in which moderator Shirley Chan asked them to introduce themselves and share their knowledge of the AAPI community. A YouTube playlist of the candidates' statements can be found here.

“I’m running for mayor because I want this city to be affordable for my own children, I want them to stay here,” said Adrienne Adams. “I want my grandchildren to feel safe when they are riding the train or the bus and right now they are not feeling that way all of the time. So I’m running for mayor  to be accountable to my children just like I will be accountable to every child in the City of New York.” Watch Adrienne Adams’ full opening statement here.

“I’m a longtime friend of CACF and I am a lifelong housing advocate and I am a Brooklyn dad,” said Brad Lander. “New York is the greatest immigrant city the world has ever known. That has been true for 400 years but it is especially urgent right now.” Watch Brad Lander’s full opening remarks here.

“I really want every single New Yorker to feel as if this is our city. I think what Latinos and Asian Communities have in common is that our parents believe in hard work and they came here so that we could have better opportunities than the generation before us. But that doesn’t feel true any more,” said Jessica Ramos. Watch her full opening statement here.

“For those who are meeting me for the first time, my name is Michael Blake, I am the son of Jamaican immigrants, my family grew up in the Bronx, I’m the youngest of four boys, my mom raised us all as did my dad," said Michael Blake. "I come to you as a K-12 public school graduate and I went to Northwestern University and had an opportunity to work for President Barack Obama and I worked for him for six and a half years. I led minority and women business outreach in the White House and to answer your question, we were very focused on how to get AAPI businesses more access than they did before.” Watch Michael Blake’s full opening statement here.

“Thank you for giving me the opportunity to be here tonight to talk to the community directly,” said Scott Stringer. “I’m a New Yorker who grew up in Washington Heights back in the day and what I’ve always loved about New York City is the diversity in my public school, in my community, because there is no other place like New York. Communities come from all over the world to live here and to be here and in my view the job of the government is when people come to New York City, they become New Yorkers.” Watch Scott Stringer’s full opening statement here.

CACF’s AAPI Mayoral Forum was organized in partnership with our 90+ member organizations. Thank you to our sponsoring and supporting organizations and the members of our organizing committee. A full list of our sponsors and committee members can be found here.

For more information, please email Lakshmi Gandhi, CACF’s Senior Communications Coordinator, at lgandhi@cacf.org.