On the cover of New York Magazine’s May 10-23, 2021 issue, reporter Clare Malone goes inside Andrew Yang’s Bloombergian run for New York City mayor, looking at how a former CEO of 100 employees has become the frontrunner to govern a city of 9 million. Malone spent the past several months following Yang on the campaign trail. Though his celebrity following his run for president has been no small part of the conversation surrounding his candidacy, Malone reported on what New Yorkers really need to know about Yang going into the June 22nd primary: what would a Yang mayoralty really look like – and what do his powerful backers want from him?
Going into the story, Malone says she just really wanted to know more about who Yang is as a person. “We’d all seen him in small, likeable soundbites on the presidential debate stage, but obviously being the frontrunner in a New york City mayoral race comes with so much more scrutiny and pressure,” she says. “The way he was so clear about plotting out his path to get to where he is now was really striking to me, as was this idea that he’s still very much forming his views around key New York City issues right now.” Candidates are often much more fully formed when they run for a big office like this, and more protective. “You don’t often get that kind of insight.”