Former veteran journalist Jami Floyd, 61, is working hard to build her congressional campaign block by block. She is up against an incredibly crowded race to replace long-time Congressmember Jerry Nadler, who announced his retirement.
“I feel obligated to run for this seat because I think it is that important,” said Floyd.
A lot is at stake this year overall with the 2026 congressional primaries and the looming threat of the Trump administration. The ultimate goal for most Democrats and more progressive candidates is to at least shift the balance of power away from a Republican-controlled Senate and House.
Nadler has held his seat in New York’s 12th Congressional District for over 30 years. The district covers the Upper West and Upper East Sides, Midtown and Times Square, Lenox Hill, and Hell’s Kitchen in Manhattan, as well as the adjacent Roosevelt Island. In terms of demographics, the district is mostly made up of young adults (25 – 34) and older (65+) white (66%) and female (52%) New Yorkers, according to the latest Census count. The district has about 12% Asian residents, 12% Hispanic, 10% of those that identify as two or more races, and 5% Black residents. It is also known to be a stronghold of Jewish voters.
So far there are over a dozen candidates vying to replace Nadler, including Assemblymember Micah Lasher, Assemblymember Alex Bores, Jack Schlossberg, George Conway, civil rights lawyer Laura Dunn, gun control activist Cameron Kasky, Wall Street investor Alan Pardee, and LGBTQ+ activist Mathew Shurka, among others.
Floyd announced her campaign in the fall of 2025. She aims to be a “radical moderate” Democrat with “common sense” policies who is dedicated to compromise and making real changes for her constituents, uptown socialites and downtown New Yorkers alike. Her platform includes lowering housing, healthcare, and grocery costs; building housing, bolstering public safety in the streets and subways, and addressing pedestrian and traffic concerns. She promises to protect against gerrymandering and advocates for the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act (JLVRAA) to rebuild the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
“Donald Trump is bad. Fighting Trump is not a platform. It is not a plan,” said Floyd. “A platform is what are you doing for the people who live in your district to have a better life. So they can thrive, not just survive. That is my goal.”
As part of her campaign, Floyd said she is committed to a listening tour of the district with her Operation Every Block, where she is literally walking every block in the district knocking doors and talking to constituents. She’s walked 135 blocks as of this week, said her campaign.
A lifelong Manhattanite, Floyd’s family was deeply entrenched in matters of racial justice. Her mother was a secretary for the American Civil Liberties Union, and her father was an artist that continued his education, eventually becoming an architect. Both were avid civil rights activists not afraid to get arrested for their fight for equality. Her parents were also an interracial couple married in 1956, when not only was it considered scandalous to do so, it was also illegal — and life-threatening — in their states. She said that the city embraced them with open arms.
“It was a love story, not just between my parents, but with New York City. And I then came to love New York City in the same way,” said Floyd. “There’s a certain comfort level I have here that I just don’t have anywhere else in the world. And there are other places I love, but not where I feel so comfortable in my skin, literal skin, as I do in New York growing up as a biracial, multiracial. We didn’t even have those words then.”
Given their lifelong reputation as “agitators,” Floyd said that her parents were actually taken aback when she pursued a career in law. “They saw lawyers as part of the problem,” said Floyd. But she had spent much of her childhood with her parents inspired by historic figures, like Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and Judge Constance Baker Motley, who used the law as a tool to further social and racial change. She wanted to work within the system the same way. Her professional career really began with her serving as a White House Fellow in the Clinton Administration.
“As a White House fellow. I worked on legislation,” said Floyd. “I worked on the assault weapons ban, the Brady Bill … I did speech writing for Al Gore. I worked on the earned income tax credit, which was a real push for me, but I learned so much about how we tax the working poor
Though she enjoyed Washington, D.C. to a degree, Floyd said she missed working more directly with people she was advocating for. Her next career move was to become an award-winning journalist, podcaster, and legal analyst, recognized as an expert on race, law, and communications. Her extensive career includes Court TV, CBS News, CNN, MSNBC, Al Jazeera America, PBS, and ABC News. “In many ways we as a profession have lost our way,” said Floyd. “I’ve come to believe that objective journalism, and this may be the most controversial thing I say, is a fiction and a falsehood. We need to let go of it because the people know journalists aren’t objective. We’re human.”
Following a hosting career at New York Public Radio’s WNYC station, Floyd ran into obstacles with higher ups. Things went downhill for Floyd after a tense July 2018 meeting with then-President Laura Walker and culminated in being accused of plagiarism in 2021, according to a federal racial discrimination lawsuit Floyd filed in 2023. Floyd alleged that she was continually paid significantly less than non-Black hosts, given a title but had little resources for projects, and endured a hostile work environment. She resigned in 2022 and filed against her former employer the next year. Floyd settled with WNYC in 2024.
“I’m very happy with the settlement and very happy to have that chapter behind me,” said Floyd, who declined to disclose the settlement amount.
Floyd is also currently writing a book about one of her heroes called, “Dream Interrupted: Thurgood Marshall and the Search for the Soul of a Nation.” And she is serving on Manhattan’s Community Board 7 as co-chair of the Transportation Committee and leading the Public Safety Working Group.