The City Politic

Can anything stop Andrew Yang?

when andrew yang dropped off his petition signatures at the city’s Board of Elections—something all candidates must do to appear on the ballot—he ran through a gauntlet of supporters, slapping elbows all the way. He announced to the crowd how many he had gathered (more than 9,400) by singing to the tune of “Seasons of Love” from the musical Rent: “How many signatures could you get in a year?” He dared anyone there to guess exactly how much all those petitions weighed, as cameras clicked and reporters live-tweeted the spectacle.

Yang wasn’t the only candidate to invite the press to watch a drop-off of signatures, and the total number he gathered was smaller than that of many others in the field, a few of whom submitted over 20,000. But he was the only one to turn what is usually a dry ritual before a municipal bureaucracy into an event, getting the kind of coverage the rest of the candidates no doubt envy as they roll out high-profile endorsements and