NEW YORK CITY — Former Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion Jr. is planning to throw his hat into the 2013 mayoral race.
Carrion, a former city councilman who recently stepped down as director of the White House Office of Urban Affairs, has officially changed his party registration from Democrat to independent, and is eyeing a run on the Republican ticket in 2013, his spokesman confirmed.
“Given the yearning for an alternative to the special interests and a leader who can focus on rebuilding and uniting all five boroughs, the coalescing of support around Adolfo Carrión as a candidate for mayor makes complete sense,” Davidson Goldin, an advisor to Carrión, said in a statement to the New York Times, which first reported the news Monday night.
Hours after the announcement, supermarket mogul John Catsimatidis, a Republican who has been testing the waters for a campaign for months, told Crain’s New York Business that he intends to open his own campaign account “in the next week or two” to explore a possible run for mayor.
Carrion currently has more than $1 million in cash in his campaign account, state campaign finance records show. He intends to meet with the Republican Party chairs on Wednesday evening.
Carrion and Catsimatidis will join a relatively small Republican field, which currently includes Doe Fund founder George McDonald and Manhattan Media CEO Tom Allon, who was also until recently a Democrat and now describes himself as a “Republican-Liberal fusion candidate.”
In order for a non-registered Republican to run on the party line, he or she must be endorsed by three of the city's five Republican Party chairs.
Running on the Republican or a minor party line would allow Carrion to sidestep what is expected to be a brutal Democratic primary between a crowded field, which is expected to include City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, former City Comptroller Bill Thompson, current City Comptroller John Liu and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer.