Eric Adams Wins NYC Mayoral Dem Primary
Image Courtesy of The City
By Jeremy Perillo
Several days after New York City held its Democratic primary for the Mayoral race, Eric Adams was named the official winner, all but ushering him into City Hall in a few months. Edging out a large field of candidates, from the infamous Andrew Yang to long-time NYC technocrat Kathryn Garcia, Adams survived the ranked-choice voting system and secured his position.
The outgoing Brooklyn Borough President and former NYPD captain embraced the political center, most notably in his assurances to strike a balance in fighting crime and ending racial justice in policing. Adams has said on numerous occasions that he does not support defunding the police.
Adams was in the lead at the end of election night, but the ranked-choice tabulations could not be completed without the thousands of mail-in-ballots sent in by New Yorkers. Under the system, voters ranked five candidates in order of their preference. Candidates who did not garner enough votes were eliminated and their ballots were redistributed based on the voter preferences. This process occurred until two candidates remained.
Kathryn Garcia, the former commissioner for the New York City Sanitation Department and Mayor Deblasio’s problem-solver, came in second, missing her chance of winning by a little over seven thousand votes. Maya Wiley, the progressive candidate endorsed by New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, came in third place, beating out businessmen and unsuccessful Democratic Presidential candidate, Andrew Yang.
However, this new voting system was not conducted perfectly. During a vote tally on Tuesday, June 29, election officials accidentally included 135,000 test ballots into the official vote count. The posted vote tallies were inaccurate for several hours before the errors were removed and adjusted.
Adams will have to run against Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa, founder of the Guardian Angels. However, Democrats outnumber Republicans 7-to-1 in NYC so Adams’s chances of winning the general election are exceptionally high.
