In the same week that brought us the spectacle of Michael Cohen testifying before Congress and many of his interrogators peacocking for the cameras, a Brooklyn elected official named Jumaane Williams delivered a rare moment of emotional truth. The scene unfolded on February 26th, at an Election Night party inside a Caribbean-owned lounge in East Flatbush. Williams, who calls himself an “activist-elected official,” has been a member of the New York City Council for nearly a decade. That day, New York City had held a special election for public advocate—an office that acts as a watchdog for residents—and Williams won, defeating sixteen other candidates.

His victory speech started shortly before 11 P.M., and at first it followed the usual script. He thanked his family and girlfriend and campaign staff and supporters. He promised to keep fighting for the causes that have long consumed him, including fixing the “housing-and-homelessness crisis” and battling against “a system of injustice that criminalizes black and brown communities.” After he finished reading his prepared speech, he remained behind the podium, sipping from a water bottle as the crowd chanted his name: “Jumaane! Jumaane!” A camera from the local television station Spectrum News NY1 stayed on him.

Before leaving the stage, he decided to address the crowd one more time. “I want to speak out on this, because it’s important,” he said. “I’ve been in therapy for the past three years.” He paused. “I want to say that publicly. I want to say that to black men who are listening.” He spoke briefly about his struggle to hold on to his sense of self, and then his speech seemed to become even more personal. “I know there’s a young black boy somewhere. . . . He is trying to find his space in the world. Nobody knows he cries himself to sleep sometimes,” he said, and became so overcome with emotion that he had to pause again. “Nobody knows how much he misses his father. Nobody knows what he’s going through. And the world tells you you have to hide it and you can’t talk about it.”

Williams delivering his acceptance speech. Video courtesy of Spectrum News NY1.

I caught up with Williams by phone this week, while he was riding the Q train to his new office. On election night, he had felt like he was in a daze—“I’m a little bit in shock,” he’d said when he took the stage—and only now were the events of that evening starting to sink in. He said that he had been thinking about speaking onstage about his therapy, but did not decide to “finally do it until right there.” He explained, “Unfortunately, it’s still very taboo in certain communities—and communities that I think really need it because of the trauma of daily life. People will talk about visiting the doctor or visiting the dentist, but they can’t talk about therapy, they can’t talk about mental health. And I want to break down that stigma.”

When he spoke about “a young black boy somewhere,” Williams said, “I was trying to speak generally, but it was me.” The son of immigrants from Grenada, Williams grew up in an apartment on the eastern edge of Brooklyn with his mother, Patricia, and his sister Jeanine. His mother raised him on her own, and on election night she stood beside him onstage, wearing a black hat and a campaign T-shirt. When he became emotional, she placed a hand on his shoulder; Jeanine stood on his other side, patting his back. “My intention was to drag it out a little longer and just try to give some more words of hope,” Williams recalled, but, with tears filling his eyes, “I realized I was going to break down pretty rapidly, so I just wanted to get it out.”

I first wrote about Williams in 2013, near the end of his first term on the City Council. “I never did too well in school,” he told me. Starting when he was a child, he had motor tics, and he was sometimes punished in school for his inability to control his body. It was not until he was in ninth grade, after his mother saw a “20/20” segment about Tourette’s syndrome, that they realized what he had. He was also diagnosed with A.D.H.D. “I stayed in the dean’s office, the principal’s office, from first grade all the way up,” he said. “I think it was a combination of a rambunctious young kid and Tourette’s. It was a hell of a combination.” At his Election Night party, he offered a long list of thank-yous, which included his fifth-grade teacher, Ms. Nedd. (“Having Ms. Nedd in my life—being able to see not just the bad kid that everybody knew, but there’s somebody else there—was critically important,” he told me. “If not for her, I would’ve gotten kicked out of school.”) It took him seven years to get a four-year degree from Brooklyn College, and four years to earn a two-year master’s degree.

In his twenties, Williams worked as a community organizer, helping tenants band together to improve conditions in their buildings. After he was elected to the City Council, in 2009, he did not concern himself only with the needs of his district. When a young person was shot anywhere in New York City, he would often hurry to the scene. He attended the funeral of Lloyd Morgan, Jr., a four-year-old who was killed by gunfire on a Bronx playground, in 2012. The sight of the boy’s tiny casket haunted him long afterward; when asked about the funeral months later, he had to shut his eyes to collect himself before speaking. He was a very early critic of the N.Y.P.D.’s use of stop-and-frisk, publicly attacking the practice long before most New Yorkers grasped how frequently police were stopping residents. (In 2011, the N.Y.P.D. made nearly seven hundred thousand such stops.) He often wore a pin on his lapel that said “STAY WOKE.”

Last year, Williams made the seemingly audacious decision to run for lieutenant governor, challenging Governor Andrew Cuomo’s handpicked lieutenant governor, Kathy Hochul, a former congresswoman. Even though Williams had never run for statewide office—and even though Hochul had held the position since 2015—he came very close to beating her, winning nearly forty-seven per cent of the vote in the Democratic primary. Last fall, when Letitia James, then the public advocate, won the election for state Attorney General, there was suddenly a citywide office that needed to be filled—and Williams’s almost-victory helped make him the front-runner. Then, two days before the election for public advocate, the Daily News revealed that Williams had been arrested a decade earlier, after his then girlfriend called the police. Williams said that he threw down her pocketbook but denied any violence; the case was dismissed and sealed. Two of his opponents held a press conference to publicize the news about his past arrest. “They both know how easy it is for ‘black man syndrome’ to take hold,” Williams told the Times. “If you want to have this discussion, there is a better way.”

Williams had won the Times’ endorsement—“Shout-out to the New York Times!” he said, during his victory speech—and now his new position promises to elevate his profile even further. During the campaign, one of his opponents decried a “leadership vacuum” in the city under Mayor Bill de Blasio, and now Williams is positioned to fill it. As it happens, de Blasio’s political career followed the same trajectory: he was a member of the City Council, and then was elected public advocate before becoming Mayor, in 2014. Williams is a frequent critic of de Blasio, and, during his victory speech, he did make a point of speaking directly to him: “I’m not running for your job,” he said. Of course, de Blasio is in his second term, and in 2021 the field will be wide open. The crowd laughed.