As New York City voters tilt slightly toward the center, the left-leaning Working Families Party hopes that a slate of four mayoral candidates will be better than the one moderate rival currently leading the polls, former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo.

The party on Saturday voted to endorse a slate of four candidates for mayor: Zohran Mamdani, an assemblyman from Queens; Brad Lander, the city comptroller; Adrienne Adams, the speaker of the City Council; and Zellnor Myrie, a state senator from Brooklyn.

Ana María Archila and Jasmine Gripper, co-directors of the New York Working Families Party, said in a statement that the city deserved a mayor who could “leave behind the scandal and corruption of the past and lead with integrity.”

The four candidates “each have a record of fighting for working families, a vision to make New York City safe and affordable for all and the courage to stand up to Trump,” they added.

The slate is the first of a two-part endorsement process that the party has embraced for the June 24 primary. In May, the group plans to throw its support behind a single candidate that its leaders believe is best positioned to defeat Mr. Cuomo.

In the 2021 Democratic mayoral primary, the three candidates backed by the Working Families Party failed to make the final round under the city’s new ranked-choice voting system. This year, the group has adjusted its endorsement process in an effort to better leverage its influence.

Candidates vying for the party’s support this year were asked to commit to working collaboratively with one another, and to encourage their supporters not to rank either Mr. Cuomo or Mayor Eric Adams. Six Democrats applied for the party’s endorsement and all agreed to those terms.

Party leaders have not yet decided on a concrete strategy for how to consolidate support around their first choice, but they have weighed obligating other candidates seeking the group’s endorsement to cross-endorse the party’s top choice.

“Our task, and that of every W.F.P.-endorsed candidate, is to remind New Yorkers of Cuomo’s real record, and to communicate to voters they don’t have to settle,” the group wrote in a memo outlining its strategy this month. “They can elect a new mayor who will stand up for working families, not the billionaires.”

The memo defined the contest as “working-families champions vs. the power-hungry, scandal-ridden politicians,” themes that all four candidates hit on in a series of statements on Saturday.

Mr. Lander said he wanted to work with the party to “deliver a safer, more affordable, better-run city so that all working families can build their lives here as I have.”

Ms. Adams referenced growing up in a union household. “That’s where I come from, who I fight for and who I’ll always be accountable to,” she said.

Mr. Myrie said he was “running to make New York more affordable, livable and safe for everyone” by building more affordable housing and creating enhanced child care options.

Mr. Mamdani mentioned Mr. Cuomo and President Trump directly and said that he was “fighting for a city that working people can actually afford.”

The party’s four-headed endorsement is part of a broader strategy among progressives seeking to thwart Mr. Cuomo, even as he garners more endorsements and support from key voting blocs.

On Sunday, the former governor is expected to receive the backing of Representative Gregory Meeks of New York, a onetime ally of the mayor who also serves as chairman of the Queens Democratic Party. Mr. Meeks helped Ms. Adams form a coalition to win the speaker’s role.

“New York has a crisis of affordability, of quality of life and of leadership, and Governor Cuomo is the only person in this race with the proven track record of results to tackle these issues head on,” said Rich Azzopardi, a spokesman for Mr. Cuomo.

But the former governor’s foes, including the Working Families Party, hope to seize on a variety of issues of Mr. Cuomo’s own, such as the sexual harassment accusations that led to his resignation in 2021. Mr. Cuomo denies wrongdoing.

The party’s endorsement could also hurt progressive candidates who failed to receive it. They include Jessica Ramos, a state senator from Queens who has struggled to raise money.

Mr. Lander has aggressively attacked Mr. Cuomo but has not risen in the polls. Ms. Adams was a late entrant to the race and lacks name recognition. Mr. Myrie is also struggling in that department.

Mr. Mamdani, whose online persona and relentless focus on affordability in his campaign message, has made strides to counter Mr. Cuomo’s momentum and could add new voters to his coalition as part of that effort. Several recent polls show him second, well behind Mr. Cuomo but leading the progressive lane with impressive fund-raising numbers.

The FlynnStoned Cannabis Company, a dispensary in Syracuse, N.Y., is the size of a large clothing store. Its wooden front doors have iron handles with finials in the shape of cannabis leaves. Inside, nuggets of cannabis flower, infused candies and vaporizers are laid out in glass cases spread over two stories. A lounge under a skylight on the third floor hosts concerts and yoga classes.

It is, by nearly any measure, one of the success stories of New York’s nascent legal marijuana industry. And the man behind FlynnStoned, a 43-year-old high school dropout and roofing entrepreneur named Michael Flynn, appears poised to build a weed empire, with FlynnStoned dispensaries from Brooklyn to Buffalo.

But Mr. Flynn’s hard-charging approach has drawn ire from communities where he is seeking to open more stores. And a recent deal-making spree, in which he has cut branding agreements with dispensaries all over the state to use his name, has drawn the attention of regulators, who are investigating whether he is violating the spirit, and perhaps the letter, of the state’s legalization law.

“They’re trying to stick a pitchfork in me,” Mr. Flynn said.

Mr. Flynn, who has tattoos on his fingers that spell “HIGH VIDA,” is in some ways the type of person whom the state’s legalization efforts were intended to support. His conviction for marijuana possession 25 years ago put him at the front of the line for a state license to sell recreational cannabis products, part of New York’s effort to right the wrongs of the war on drugs.

And in some ways, the success of his business is a bright spot in the state’s troubled marijuana rollout. As others struggled to get off the ground, hamstrung by a combination of complex rules and a slow bureaucracy, FlynnStoned made $30 million in revenue in its first year.

His ambitions have also encountered some familiar roadblocks. Would-be neighbors in New York City have sought to block new stores over concerns about crime and exposing children to marijuana.

At the same time, community boards and state regulators worry that his entrepreneurial attempt to sell the rights to the FlynnStoned name to about 30 dispensaries around the state amounts to preying on marijuana license holders who are less fortunate.

“It seems to not be in the spirit of giving the helping hand to those who were previously adversely impacted by anti-cannabis laws,” said Jesús Pérez, the district manager of a community board on Manhattan’s East Side, where Mr. Flynn is building a dispensary in what was the city’s last Hallmark store. “Just red flag after red flag seems to have come up about this that the community was not comfortable with.”

A Lifelong Calling

Mr. Flynn sees selling marijuana as his destiny.

“I just feel like I’ve been put on Earth to do this,” he said in a recent interview. “I’m just going to keep doing it as long as I’m having fun.”

He said he had started selling weed when he was 12, after his parents divorced and his father disappeared from his life. Left unsupervised, he got hooked on drugs. At 15, he moved out, bouncing among apartments and flop houses before dropping out of school. By the time he was 24, he was carrying hockey bags full of weed across the border from Canada, charging about $2,400 a pound in Syracuse, his hometown, and $4,000 a pound in Florida.

He was convicted of low-level marijuana possession when he was 18, paid a fine and avoided jail. Five years later, he quit drugs and took up roofing.

He started his first business, The Roofing Guys, in 2006. He set himself apart by offering customers financing and, as his main competitors fell to the wayside, he got rich.

“I was so addicted to drugs, alcohol and the party life,” he said. “I turned that around and got addicted to success.”

It has afforded him a different life with his wife, Angela, a high school classmate who gave him a Home Depot credit card in her name to help start the business. The couple have five children and live on a custom-built estate in the middle of a cornfield near Syracuse.

When New York legalized recreational cannabis in 2021, Mr. Flynn’s demonstrated ability to run a business and his marijuana conviction helped him win a license to open one of the state’s first legal dispensaries.

On Instagram, he shared video from the ribbon-cutting ceremony in June 2023 interspersed with photos of his lime-green Lamborghini Aventador and a diamond necklace bearing his store’s name encircling a green marijuana leaf. The video was set to a song called “Blow Up” by the rapper J. Cole, who sings, “This is a song for my haters/ Y’all got me feeling like the greatest.”

As FlynnStoned grew, so did the opportunities its founder began to see fanning out before him.

Building the Brand

Under New York’s legalization law, one shop owner is not allowed to control more than three dispensaries.

Mr. Flynn, regulators say, may have found a way to skirt that law.

In the wake of FlynnStoned’s success, other dispensary owners began reaching out to Mr. Flynn for help and advice, he said. Soon, he started to make deals with some of them.

Those deals allowed other dispensaries to use the FlynnStoned name in exchange for a small cut of their revenue, he said. Mr. Flynn added that he also connects the business owners with friends who are investors but “not Wall Street guys.”

“At first it was advice and help, and then it became, well, why don’t we just build the brand and help ourselves, too?” he said.

Mr. Flynn said the branding agreements do not make him an owner or investor. He declined to say how much revenue he takes, except that it was “not that much.”

But state officials have begun scrutinizing the deals, seeking to prevent big players from taking advantage of small, local business owners whom legalization was supposed to benefit. James Rogers, the director of a new unit within the Office of Cannabis Management that investigates potential ownership violations, said licensees were free to sign agreements that make their businesses work. But he said his team would unwind deals that give investors too much control.

“It’s the predatory behavior that we’re after,” he said.

The agency declined to say whether it was investigating Mr. Flynn, though Mr. Pérez, the community board official, said that was what he had been told by state officials. Mr. Flynn also said the agency was blocking some of the deals.

Robert Grannis, a 54-year-old farmer, got a license in 2022 and plans to open a FlynnStoned store in Binghamton. He said he had sought Mr. Flynn’s help after the state failed to provide the financing and real estate that it had promised to help early licensees open dispensaries.

Mr. Flynn initially offered to buy his license, Mr. Grannis said, but they settled on a branding deal, and Mr. Grannis took on an investor who paid for renovations. He declined to discuss the terms.

Mr. Grannis said the deal gave him peace of mind because he had heard horror stories of people building out their stores only for regulators to deny or delay their openings. Unlike liquor stores, cannabis licensees receive their final licenses only after their stores are built.

He said that what Mr. Flynn was doing in the cannabis industry was no different than what Starbucks did for coffee or McDonald’s did for hamburgers.

“We’re not doing anything but the American dream,” he said.

Axel Bernabe, a lawyer who helped to write the state’s legalization law and the rules for the market, helps Mr. Flynn structure the deals. Some industry insiders have criticized his involvement, but Mr. Bernabe said there is nothing wrong with what he or Mr. Flynn is doing.

“This idea that this is super shady is mudslinging business,” Mr. Bernabe said, adding, “It’s a play on building your brand, and everybody’s trying to do that.”

An Unexpected Turn

The deals had proceeded smoothly until Mr. Flynn began expanding in New York City, drawing vociferous backlash.

Residents protested his plan to put a dispensary in the former Hallmark store, near the United Nations. In Greenwich Village, where he is converting what had been an adult video store into a FlynnStoned, the community board dug up videos of him and others smoking at his Syracuse store, which is not allowed. A petition to stop him from opening another location in the Greenpoint Savings Bank building in Brooklyn also gained hundreds of signatures.

“I’m not anti-pot, but I am anti-dispensary,” said Tanya Arias, a Realtor who has lived around the corner from the Hallmark store site for 20 years. “It’s not a store that’s going to service the needs of our community.”

Mr. Flynn’s own words may cause him the most trouble. In September, he told the East Side community board that he was the sole owner of the forthcoming dispensary, that he had already signed a lease and that the Hallmark store’s owners had not paid their rent in months.

None of it was true.

He said he had not expected the opposition, but he bristled at questions that he felt were intrusive. “Whatever I said in that community board was just whatever I had to say to get the hell out of there,” he said.

Kuljot Bhasin, 63, who owned the Hallmark store with his wife, Amrita, sued Mr. Flynn for defamation. They are seeking at least $4 million in damages. Mr. Flynn’s defense lawyers said their client had not spoken maliciously.

“To come and disparage us to make himself look good to the board, that infuriated us,” Mr. Bhasin said in an interview.

Mr. Bhasin, a Sikh American immigrant, said he plans to reopen the business in a new location. But a part of him hopes that Mr. Flynn’s plans fall through, he said, so that he might be able to return to the shop where he sold cards and gifts for 22 years.

Alain Delaquérière contributed research.

A Newark federal judge on Friday heard arguments on whether the case to free Mahmoud Khalil, a leader of pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University, should continue to play out in New Jersey or be transferred to Louisiana, a potentially more favorable venue for the government’s case.

The judge, Michael Farbiarz, did not make an immediate decision, but is expected to rule soon. Mr. Khalil, a legal permanent resident, was detained on March 8 at his New York City apartment, sent briefly to a New Jersey detention center and now has been held for nearly three weeks in a facility in Jena, La.

While Mr. Khalil’s lawyers are fighting for his freedom, the Trump administration is seeking to deport him, saying that he spread antisemitism through his involvement in the protests. If Mr. Khalil stays in Louisiana, his case could end up in one of America’s most conservative appeals courts. Those judges could decide whether the government’s rationale for detaining Mr. Khalil could be used in other cases.

The case was originally filed in New York, but a judge there decided he lacked jurisdiction and that it should be heard in New Jersey. The attempts by Mr. Khalil’s lawyers to free him have created a tangle of litigation, much of which has focused on a seemingly technical question: In which court should his case be heard?

On Friday in Newark, Baher Azmy, a lawyer for Mr. Khalil and legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, argued in court that transferring the case to Louisiana would set a precedent for other activists to be moved without legal justification, which he called “Kafkaesque.”

The government’s case against Mr. Khalil was undertaken “in order to retaliate against constitutionally protected speech,” Mr. Azmy said.

But a lawyer for the government, August E. Flentje, said it “made no good sense” for the case to be heard in New Jersey when Mr. Khalil had been arrested in New York, asserting that “the case belongs in Louisiana.”

Judge Farbiarz delayed ruling on a request from Mr. Khalil’s lawyers that he be granted bail, saying he first wanted to resolve the issue of where the case would be heard.

Mr. Khalil is one of at least nine protest participants who have been arrested and detained this month. Unlike some others, he is a legal resident, married to an American citizen who is expected to give birth next month.

He has not been charged with a crime. Instead, the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has cited a rarely used law to explain Mr. Khalil’s detention, saying that the recent graduate threatens the Trump administration’s foreign policy goal of halting the spread of antisemitism.

Mr. Khalil’s lawyers initially asked for his release in New York federal court. But the judge there determined that it should be heard neither there, nor in Louisiana, but in New Jersey, where Mr. Khalil was being held at the moment his lawyers filed court papers. Accordingly, the case itself was transferred to New Jersey last week.

Once there, the government’s lawyers continued to fight to transfer the case to Louisiana. In a filing, they noted that Mr. Khalil had never filed a petition in New Jersey — and argued that the court had no jurisdiction.

The administration has reason to continue its fight. If the legal battle is waged in Louisiana, it is likely to make its way to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which from New Orleans presides over cases from that state.

The Fifth Circuit is known as one of the country’s most conservative, and in the past has sided with government officials over noncitizens. If its judges rule in favor of the Trump administration, Secretary Rubio could continue to cite the law used to justify the detention of Mr. Khalil in efforts to deport other legal permanent residents.

Friday’s hearing came days after a judge in Manhattan ordered the government to halt efforts to detain Yunseo Chung, a 21-year-old Columbia student and legal permanent resident who had participated in pro-Palestinian protests. Ms. Chung, who shares a legal team with Mr. Khalil, was never detained by immigration authorities.

In an interview outside the courthouse after the hearing, Mr. Azmy noted the distinction between her case and Mr. Khalil’s.

“The fact that he’s in custody allows the government to have total control over him,” Mr. Azmy said.

As the hearing played out, around 50 demonstrators assembled outside the Newark courthouse to protest Mr. Khalil’s detention. They waved Palestinian flags, held signs and chanted.

“Hands off our students! ICE off our campus!” read one sign. “Opposing genocide does not mean supporting terrorism.”

Speaking at the rally, Amy Torres, executive director for the New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice, pointed to a chilling effect on free speech created by the detention of students across the country.

“They have only targeted people that they view to be voiceless,” she said, adding, “This is about this administration taking the issue that they believe is the least sympathetic, and making an example out of the people that they arrest.”

Jonah E. Bromwich contributed reporting.