‘Life was upended’: Corey Johnson on why he dropped out of mayoral race
“Something had to come off my plate,” City Council Speaker Corey Johnson told The Post of his decision to quit the 2021 mayoral race.
Johnson was already dealing with his work at City Hall and with his ongoing struggle with depression, not to mention a life — and city — “upended” by the pandemic.
Running for mayor at the same time was just too much, he explained in an interview Thursday after announcing he’d decided to retrieve his hat from the ring — and as protesters who claim he “lied” to them about defunding the NYPD converged outside his Chelsea apartment building.
“I’m used to being a social person, I enjoy going to City Hall, I enjoy going to events and all of a sudden, life was upended,” he said.
“When I was trying to figure out how to balance all of these things,” he said of his work as Speaker, his race for mayor and his mental health, “I knew I needed to focus on getting better and getting back to 100 percent,” he said.
“One of those things had to give,” he added.
“I wasn’t going to not be speaker, I wasn’t not going to focus on my health – something had to come off my plate.”
The decision to back out was difficult, he said.
“It’s a hard day; it’s a mixture of sadness but also a tremendous relief to finally be able to talk about something I’ve been struggling with for a while and I’ve been keeping under wraps. So, there’s some freedom in that,” he said.
“It’s sad to feel some finality in something that I was excited about, but also tremendous relief in being able to be honest.”
His battle with depression began weighing on him in May, he said.
“It took me a while to even fully understand that and come to terms with that because from the beginning of March, when the pandemic hit, until the budget passed, I didn’t take one day off,” he said.
“I worked seven days a week for three and a half months; I shunted my own feelings aside,” he said.
“Once I was able to take a break at the beginning of July, it all kind of hit me like a ton of bricks. It was like a wave came crashing down on me, of realizing how – what I’d been struggling with – even before.”
The pandemic had not hit him as hard as it did people who got sick or lost loved ones, Johnson said he realizes.
“I have a job, I have healthcare, so I have it a lot better off than many other people,” he said.
“But I think that change in what was happening to each one of our lives affected me in ways that I couldn’t put my finger on at the time,’ he said.
“I just started to feel – less joy, disconnected, isolated, the inability to sleep, loss of appetite,” he said.
“I got the help that I needed,” he said of therapy and the support of loved ones.
“I’m not out of the woods yet, but I’m feeling a lot better than I did in May, June and July. It’s a process — it’s a non-linear process,” he said.
Depression “plays tricks on you,” he said.
“It tells you, ‘Are you really feeling this way?’ and ‘Just buck up,’ and ‘Go for a long walk,’ and ‘Eat a little healthier and you’ll feel better.’
“Some of those things do help, but it doesn’t help the underlying issue,” he said.
“I didn’t come to the decision right away,” Johnson said of backing out of the race.
“It was a process of talking to my mother, talking to my boyfriend – my boyfriend still wanted me to run and I think still wants me to run,” he said with a laugh.
“But, it was a process that eventually I was trying to figure out where I was going to land on it.”
He sat with the decision for a few weeks after making it, Johnson said, just to be sure it was right and wasn’t going to change his mind.
Ultimately, he said, he realized he needed to focus on his health and on his job, for the next 15 months, as Speaker.
“I’ve always tried to be honest,” he added.
“I came out at 16 years old, I’m the only openly HIV positive elected official in the state of New York, I got sober at 27,” he said.
“I would talk about how hard it was to be single before I met my boyfriend – so I’ve always tried to be honest.”
Some advised him to keep his personal issues private, “because it could hurt me or my future,” he added.
“But I wanted to honest about what I was going through, both because I thought it would bring relief to me — because it’s been so painful and hard to hide it — and I know a lot of other New Yorkers are going through this right now, given the turmoil and the upending of everyone’s lives over the last six months.”
With Johnson gone from the race, Comptroller Scott Stringer and Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams remain as the front-runners for the 2021 Democratic mayoral primary.
Additional reporting by Laura Italiano