Eric Adams Opens Wide Lead in NYC Mayoral Race: Updates

Eric Adams has a wide preliminary lead over his Democratic opponents in the ranked-choice primary election for New York City mayor.

Adams is the first choice of more than 31 percent of Democratic voters, with the vast majority of Election Day ballots counted, according to the Board of Elections. Maya Wiley is more than nine points behind at about 22 percent, and Kathryn Garcia is at about 20 percent. Andrew Yang, who conceded on Tuesday evening, trailed well behind them in fourth place, and Scott Stringer ended a distant fifth. But absentee ballots will not be counted for days, and nor will voters’ second, third, fourth, and fifth preferences. Though Adams’s lead looks difficult to surmount, the winner may not be known for weeks. The next round of voting calculations will begin on June 29.

Below are the latest developments in the race.

The beef that never ends

What does Cuomo think of Eric Adams possibly winning the mayoral primary?

"With a new mayor, you're going to see both an increase in the confidence, and leadership, and increase in the competence of the management of New York City"

cough BdB

— Zach Williams (@ZachReports) June 23, 2021

"The relationship will be better, by definition," Cuomo says when asked about how the next mayor of NYC can have a better relationship with him.

Says it's hard to have a good partnership when the current administration is "hyper-political" and "not competent."

— Ben Max (@TweetBenMax) June 23, 2021

Sliwa goes after Adams for first time

Curtis Sliwa was back out on the trail after securing the Republican nomination and took aim at his assumed future general election opponent, Adams. New York Daily News’ Shant Shahrigian reports that Sliwa said he blames Adams, an outspoken former NYPD captain, for the ending of qualified immunity for the city’s officers. In March, the city council voted to end qualified immunity, making it easier for victims of police misconduct to pursue legal actions against officers. Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, has advocated for the change as a way to bring about police reform. Sliwa said he intends to show that he is the true pro-cop candidate in the race: “There’s no doubt I’m a tough guy.”

Turnout surpasses 2013 with more to come

Mayor Bill De Blasio announced during a Wednesday morning press conference that 944,197 votes have been cast in the primary election with more than 90,000 absentee ballots yet to be counted. This figure greatly surpasses the turnout for the last non-incumbent mayoral primary in 2013 when about 750,000 votes were cast in both parties’ primaries. (The 2021 primary featured races other than mayor, so the comparison is not perfect.)

.@NYCMayor says 944,197 votes cast in the city as of now, with more absentees coming in.

Relatively good!

— Ben Max (@TweetBenMax) June 23, 2021

The Yang blame game begins

Andrew Yang, who for months was the race’s front-runner, badly underperformed expectations on Tuesday night, taking only 11.66 percent of first-place votes in the current count and conceding late in the evening. Now, Yang allies who worked on his 2020 presidential campaign are blaming his poor showing on a lobbying firm closely aligned with Yang’s campaign.

The Uprising’s Hunter Walker reports that associates of the candidate claim that his mayoral bid was mismanaged by Tusk Strategies. The firm is run by Bradley Tusk, a wealth venture capitalist whom some had cast as a political Svengali, shaping a relatively blank-slate candidate around his policy preferences.

“For months, several senior staffers from the presidential campaign offered guidance to Tusk Strategies without response in regards to earned media and digital that were largely ignored,” an anonymous senior adviser from the Yang presidential campaign, told Walker. “This loss is being squarely placed on this firm.”

Adams talks about Black lives and knocks rivals in freewheeling speech

Taking the stage at an election-night party in Williamsburg, he was met by supporters chanting “The champ is here!” Adams was his usual, idiosyncratic self, speaking sometimes in the third person and stopped just short of declaring outright victory: “New York City said our first choice is Eric Adams.”

Speaking for 40 minutes, Adams took shots at the media and his rivals, made a tribute to his late mother, and spoke in particular about the lives of Black New Yorkers, whose votes propelled him into first place. “If Black lives really matter, it can’t only be against police abuse,” said the man who was beaten by cops as a teenager and then became an officer himself. “It has to be about the violence tearing apart our communities,” he continued, talking about the need for residents to not only be free of guns and crime, but to also have affordable housing and healthy food.

Despite apparently trouncing Wiley and Yang, he couldn’t resist taking jabs at them. Adams said he has real experience fighting crime as a cop, opposed to Wiley’s “theoretical experience.” He also dunked on Yang, saying “some candidates misunderstood is that social media does not pick a candidate. People on Social Security pick a candidate.”

What happened in the other elections on Wednesday?

In the primary for Manhattan District Attorney, progressive Alvin Bragg is leading Tali Farhadian Weinstein by around 3 points. In the comptroller’s race, progressive Brad Lander is leading Corey Johnson by around 9 points. In the Bronx borough president’s race, Vanessa Gibson leads Fernando Cabrera by about 5 points. In the Manhattan borough president’s race, Mark Levine leads Brad Hoylman by about 3 points. In the race to replace Eric Adams as Brooklyn borough president, Antonio Reynoso leads Robert Cornegy by around 9 points. Outside the city, the socialist candidate India Walton has declared victory in the mayoral primary in Buffalo, though an official call has not yet been made.

A borough by borough breakdown of voting preferences

Very clear political battle lines tonight. Adams won Black and Hispanic voters in the outer boroughs. Wiley won Brooklyn/Queens hipsters. Garcia won Manhattan elites. And Yang won Asian and Orthodox Jewish/ethnic white areas of Brooklyn. Map by @cinyc9. pic.twitter.com/nnY3Q2JE7l

— Nathaniel Rakich (@baseballot) June 23, 2021

Yang has conceded

Around 10:40 p.m., Yang took the stage at his election night party to end a major campaign for the second time in less than 18 months.

“You all know I am a numbers guy,” he told his supporters. “I’m someone who traffics in what’s happening by the numbers. And I am not going to be the next mayor of New York City based upon the numbers that have come in. Tonight I am conceding this race.”

When he called it quits, Yang had pulled in less than 12 percent of the vote. Not everyone at the candidate’s party was dismayed by the weak showing:

Somebody just shouted, "universal basic alcohol" after Yang's concession speech

— Sam Raskin (@samraskinz) June 23, 2021

Curtis Sliwa wins Republican mayoral primary

The Associated Press has called the GOP primary for Curtis Sliwa, the founder of the vigilante group the Guardian Angels. To celebrate, he appeared onstage with Rudy Giuliani while talking about “refunding” the NYPD and “taking the handcuffs off the police and putting them on the criminals.” Sliwa defeated businessman and taxi-driver advocate Fernando Mateo. In his victory speech, he gave a shoutout to his many pets:

Curtis Sliwa, now officially the Republican nominee for the mayor of the City of New York, notes in his victory speech that each of his 15 rescue cats have their own distinct personalities

— Eliza Shapiro (@elizashapiro) June 23, 2021

Can Adams hang onto his lead?

Intelligencer’s Ben Jacobs reports:

Adams’s wide lead over his closest opponent makes him the favorite to win, though he still needs to earn enough voter preferences under the ranked-choice system to reach 50 percent plus one. (The next round of voting calculations will begin on June 29.) That could be a challenge for a candidate who spent much of the final weeks of campaign courting controversy. In theory, his polarizing personality could hold him back in later rounds if voters decided not to rank him at all. This ranked-choice element was behind the alliance between Garcia and Yang, with Yang urging his supporters over the weekend to rank her second on their ballots. The result of Yang’s endorsement will be borne out in following rounds, potentially boosting Garcia into position to take on Adams.

Adams campaign kicks out New York reporter over critical article

New York contributor David Freedlander reports he was denied entry to the Adams victory party over a critical article he wrote about the candidate last week. According to Freedlander, campaign staff approached him at the door of a venue in Williamsburg hosting the Adams party and one person said, “You’re not getting in here” before proceeding to say how the article was supposedly flawed. New York spoke with the Adams campaign prior to the publication of “The Company Eric Adams Keeps,” which quoted 30 people in New York politics — “almost all of them anonymously, citing the fear that he would soon be mayor and look to exact revenge on the mayoral front-runner’s decades in politics.” Freedlander reported on Adams’s controversial history, including his history of standing by a former lawmaker who was convicted of slashing his girlfriend and of his close connection to Frank Carone, a Democratic lawyer in Brooklyn, lobbyist, and fixer.

So here’s a fun fact: thanks to this article I wrote for @NYMag I have been kicked out of the Eric Adams election night party https://t.co/Ufy0416QAv

— David Freedlander (@freedlander) June 22, 2021

Evan Thies, a campaign official, told NY1 it was an “unfortunate misunderstanding, in no way did the campaign intend to do that.”

Where are the exit polls?

Unlike the 2013 primary (or the 2020 presidential race), it does not look like there will be exit polls helping to inform election watchers where the count may be going. As Larry Rosin, the president of the polling firm Edison Research, told the New York Times: “If we aren’t doing it, it’s probably no one doing it. It’s a very arcane little corner of the research world and not many people hang out in this arcane little corner.”

Ranked choice is most likely the reason for the absence, as exit polling is complicated and expensive even in traditional races.

Exit interviews with the current mayor

On Tuesday, the New York Times and Politico both published interviews with the checked-out and unpopular Bill de Blasio. When a Times reporter asked if he considered Eric Adams a progressive, the mayor said of the former Republican: “Oh, unquestionably. He was progressive long before it was fashionable.” He also diagnosed what he saw as an unorganized left flank in the city politics: “What’s clear is that the movement needs to become more of a movement — more coherent.”

In an interview with Politico conducted last Thursday in Prospect Park in Brooklyn, de Blasio sounded more introspective. “I think I sort of once was lost and now I’m found,” he said. “I lived my authentic life a long time. I think this job tightened me too much. Or I let it tighten me. I think I’m going back to who I am. That’s also a joyous moment. It really is. This is how I want to live. This is the right way to live.” The quiet moment wouldn’t last long. Just after this self-analysis, a father playing catch with his son stopped to yell at him: “No one wants you! You’re the worst. You’re the WORST!”

Yang promises “epic celebration tonight”

BEN JACOBS: Speaking to reporters in the drizzle outside a polling place in Cobble Hill, Yang tried almost too hard to project his trademark cheer. “It’s Election Day!” he proclaimed before insisting we are “poised to win this race and have an epic celebration tonight.”

Tuesday marked the culmination of a remarkable journey for the former tech entrepreneur whose gadfly presidential campaign transformed from a total unknown to a political celebrity, to the front-runner to be mayor before fading into the middle of the pack in recent weeks.

“I’m driven by the opportunity to help as many people as possible,” he told Intelligencer. “And being able to serve in this kind of role is an incredible opportunity that’s only become possible because of the last number of years and a number of people worked very hard at supporting my presidential campaign and I hope they are excited about what I accomplish as mayor.”

Paperboy Prince stops by Astoria in decorated campaign bus

Y’all the @PaperboyPrince bus is in Astoria! pic.twitter.com/njzlHPqy29

— danielle muoio (@muoiod) June 22, 2021

Adams gives up attacks on ranked-choice voting

BEN JACOBS: Days after picking a fight with Andrew Yang and Kathryn Garcia over their alliance — baselessly comparing it to a “poll tax” (his campaign says he was talking about how his supporters felt) — Eric Adams dropped this line of attack and shifted back to the message that had propelled him to front-runner status.

“Today is about talking to people. No more intellectual, philosophical conversations,” he told reporters during an early-afternoon campaign stop in Washington Heights. “Millions of people are behind with their rent. People are dealing with crime, uncertainly if you are employed or not, lack of rent. These are real issues. All the other stuff, those are philosophical privileged issues.”

A crowd of supporters intermittently did a call-and-response chant of “People, power” while former state senator Adam Clayton Powell IV, son of the legendary Harlem congressman, urged everyone walking by on St. Nicholas Avenue to “come meet the next mayor, Eric Adams.”

The candidate was upbeat, posing for selfies and cracking jokes with passersby. “I’m going to put my earring back in when I’m mayor,” he told one neighborhood denizen, then told a heavily tattooed man walking by, “You inspired me to get one.”

Adams literature features questionable definition of endorsements

Eric Adams’s campaign flyers are advertising people he has been “endorsed by,” including those who have endorsed him only as a second choice, such as Congressmen Ritchie Torres and Hakeem Jefferies, who are backing Andrew Yang and Maya Wiley, respectively, as their top picks.

Eric Adams has second choice endorsements on his literature next to the first choice ones pic.twitter.com/kwNv7w4rZg

— Ben Jacobs (@Bencjacobs) June 22, 2021

Can de Blasio see over the privacy-booth walls?

.@NYCMayor has kept his ranking a closely guarded secret, and did not divulge any clues before heading to the ballot box pic.twitter.com/lfvmOsRXRu

— Joe Anuta (@joeanuta) June 22, 2021

AOC calls Adams ‘Trumpian,’ he hits back

In an interview with Hot 97, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was critical of Adams, citing his rhetoric around election that raised the specter of “hanky-panky” by opponents and called the Garcia-Yang alliance voter suppression like Jim Crow. “He’s not even clearly committing to honor the results of the election which is very Trumpian and I think it’s really unfortunate because we shouldn’t be messing with that in New York City,” she said.

The Adams campaign shot back, in a statement to a Times reporter:

The Adams campaign responds:“That is categorically false and irresponsible. Eric has repeatedly said he would honor the results of the election, including at a debate and today. This is a desperate tactic by a rival campaign to mislead voters at the last minute.” https://t.co/Zs7dBVcdPq

— Emma G. Fitzsimmons (@emmagf) June 22, 2021

AOC also revealed she ranked Stringer second after Wiley as No. 1. “Here’s the deal. This race, I think, has been really all over the place for a lot of people, to say the least. And so I do think it’s been hard for folks to rank. I personally have ranked Scott Stringer No. 2, and I think he’s also a really strong candidate from a policy perspective,” she said.

Why there could be no winner on Election Night

Intelligencer’s Nia Prater lays out the ballot counting process, which could mean we won’t know the primary results until mid-July:

After polls close at 9 p.m. on Tuesday, the BOE is expected to release unofficial preliminary results based on early and same-day voting, as they normally do. (Absentee ballots must be postmarked by June 22 and have a week to reach a BOE office.) So far, according to the BOE, 191,197 people cast ballots during the nine-day early voting period that ended Sunday.

… On June 29, the BOE will tabulate the unofficial first-round results, but no candidate is expected to reach 50 percent on the first ballot — meaning more votes will have to be counted, and ranked choices will come into effect. Also on this day, one week after Election Day, absentee, military, and provisional ballots can begin to be tabulated. (Once absentee ballots are received, the BOE will alert voters if they have any errors and allow them until July 9 to “cure” their ballot.)

After that first count, another week will go by, until July 6, when the BOE will provide an updated count with the number of received absentee ballots and give weekly updates as more come in. Final official results are expected during the week of July 12, nearly three weeks after the polls close.

Who is progressives’ best bet?

Intelligencer’s Eric Levitz explains why progressive New Yorkers should rank Andrew Yang over Eric Adams:

… I’m putting Yang fifth on my ballot and leaving Adams off it. My reasons for doing so are twofold: First, Adams is simply the more right-wing politician. And, in some cases, Adams’s conservatism is inextricable from his strong ties to certain unions and nonwhite voting blocs. The front-runner is the Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association’s favorite Democratic candidate and, also, the only one in the mayor’s race who wants to expand the use of solitary confinement in the city’s jails. Yang, by contrast, has vowed to ban the practice, which mental-health experts and the United Nations deem a form of torture. And Yang also sits to Adams’s left on other criminal-justice issues, including the decriminalization of psychedelics. 

Second, Yang’s newfound, formal alliance with Garcia makes his mayoralty a bit less of a black box than it was even last week. Yang had vowed to offer Garcia a top position in his administration months ago. But if Yang manages to defeat Adams — after Garcia shepherds her supporters into ranking him second — she will (almost certainly) be guaranteed exceptional influence over Yang’s policies. And while Garcia is a moderate with her share of demerits, she is also the only candidate calling for a citywide ban on single-family residential zoning — which is, more or less, a prerequisite for resolving New York’s housing crisis, itself a prerequisite for resolving a hefty percentage of the city’s largest social and economic problems.

Candidates cast their ballots

Eric Adams said he’s “feeling great” as he showed up to vote in Brooklyn this morning.

“The champ is here,” @ericadamsfornyc says coming here to vote pic.twitter.com/3JeeKV3bmd

— katie honan (@katie_honan) June 22, 2021

More strange claims from Adams

Throughout his campaign, the Brooklyn borough president has brought up several anecdotes he has never mentioned in public before, including his time at the Spofford Juvenile Detention Center in the Bronx; his time as a squeegee man; and the time he stopped a hate crime on the train while off-duty. The “can’t prove he did, can’t prove he didn’t” streak continued with more peculiar claims in the final days of the race:

He was quoted in the Times on Saturday in two stories. In one he said he had the highest grades in his cadet class but they gave the valedictory to someone else. In the second he said he paid the fare for multiple children caught up in sex trafficking to return home https://t.co/09X4V13Mgq pic.twitter.com/tO0uixmb3B

— David Freedlander (@freedlander) June 21, 2021

So re this strange Adams answer... it gets stranger: Curtis Mayfield never performed at this concert. He was injured as state senator Marty Markowitz was introducing him. https://t.co/0tjCkn1ivY pic.twitter.com/aVAl9htr0y

— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) June 21, 2021

Times passed on Stringer’s accuser

Almost two months after the comptroller was first accused of groping, the Columbia Journalism Review reported Monday on how the allegation impacted his campaign. Initially, the New York Times did not publish Jean Kim’s allegation because they were not able to corroborate her claim that Stringer groped and sexually harassed her. Although the Intercept later reported contradictions in Kim’s story, CJR spoke with several editors about how their coverage changed following the allegation:

After the initial flurry of news stories about Kim’s allegation, there was “a change in temperature across the coverage,” Alyssa Katz, deputy editor of The City, a nonprofit digital news platform, and former member of the NY Daily News editorial board, says. “You definitely saw a retreat from Stringer being covered, as if the obituary had already been written.”

… “No. We didn’t cover Stringer as much” after Kim’s initial allegations, says [NY1 host Errol Louis.] “After we chewed it over,” he says, “the consensus was that unless he can pull a rabbit out of the hat or change the narrative, Stringer’s campaign is on life support.”

… Stringer’s second accuser, however, did provide contemporaneous corroboration. Teresa Logan, who worked at a tavern co-founded by Stringer, said he had groped her and made unwanted sexual advances. At the time, Logan told her sister, Yohanna Logan, and at least one other friend, both of whom spoke with the Times, about some of the incidents. As is often the case with sexual-misconduct cases, there were “no known witnesses,” the Times reported.

Faux ads with razor-sharp barbs

Writer and occasional graphic-design prankster Dennard Dayle has made a series of fake campaign flyers for each of the candidates, which started popping up around the city over the weekend:

I admittedly know nothing about the org behind these, but it got a laugh out of me. pic.twitter.com/AmMEkUMCVb

— Sasha Perigo (@sashaperigo) June 20, 2021

This post will be repeatedly updated to include new information as it becomes available.