Brooklyn Borough President and former police captain Eric Adams holds a comfortable lead after the first round of counting in the New York Democratic mayoral primary, buoyed by a focus on law enforcement in a crime- and pandemic-battered city. Yet voters face a long wait to learn who will be their next mayor.
With nearly all the precincts reporting early Wednesday, Adams had about 31% of the vote, followed by civil rights lawyer Maya Wiley with 22% and former city Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia with about 20%. Due to ranked-choice voting and a large number of absentee ballots, it may be weeks before a final result is announced.
At a time when the issue of police brutality is driving much of the nation’s policy agenda, Adams managed to balance his former career as a cop with his record of pushing for NYPD reform after being assaulted by an officer as a teen.
“My journey began on the floor of the 103rd Precinct when I was beaten,” Adams said. “Now I’m going to be the mayor of this city.”
“This coalition that we built, Black, White, Brown, Asian, Muslims, Jews, Christians -- this amazing coalition -- Italians, Russian-speaking, Irish, they called me the United Nations candidate,” he said. “All these different groups bringing this city together, we don’t need a divider, we need a unifier.”
Adams, 60, isn’t the Democratic nominee yet. Despite a 9-point advantage over second-place Wiley, Adams must survive 12 rounds of subsequent vote counts to win the primary in the ranked-choice voting system being used for the first time in the city’s mayoral contest.
As expected, turnout was slightly higher than in the 2013 primary, but a change in the election calendar, plus a stormy Election Day, may have depressed voter enthusiasm somewhat.
At 7 a.m., with 96.62% of scanners reported, the New York City Board of Elections had tallied 799,827 votes in the Democratic primary, according to unofficial Election Night results. Adams won 253,234 first-choice votes, which included ballots cast early and on primary election day but not absentee ballots. The board said it had distributed 221,008 absentee ballots, 90,763 of which had been returned. Still, other absentee ballots postmarked by Tuesday will be counted by the elections board if they are received by June 29.
Former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang, who was fourth in a pack of 13 candidates in the first round, conceded defeat late Tuesday and dropped out. The retreat capped a remarkable tumble from front-runner in the early polls to also ran.
“I’m a numbers guy, I’m someone who traffics in what happens in the numbers, and I am not going to be New York City mayor,” said Yang, in a somber speech to supporters on Tuesday night.
Republicans nominated Curtis Sliwa, founder of the red beret-wearing Guardian Angels, a crime prevention group, over restaurateur Fernando Mateo. But Sliwa faces long odds to win November’s general election in the overwhelmingly Democratic city.
If Adams prevails in the general election, he would be the second Black man to hold the mayor’s office in the city’s history since David Dinkins in the early 1990s. If Wiley, 57, or Garcia, 51, overtake Adams, they would be the city’s first female mayor.
“Women came out because you know what? It is time for women to lead this city,” Garcia told supporters on Tuesday night. “I know how to make us safe, I know how to rebuild this economy, and I know how to do it as a New York with hustle, with sheer hard work, because that’s what got me here.”
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