By Joseph Ax
(Reuters) – New York City will release the latest vote tallies in its hotly contested Democratic mayoral race on Tuesday, one week after preliminary Election Day results gave Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams a considerable lead.
Tuesday’s vote counts will be the first analysis using the city’s new ranked-choice voting system, in which voters rank up to five candidates in order of preference. Last week’s initial numbers were based only on voters’ first choice.
But Tuesday’s totals will not include any of the approximately 125,000 absentee ballots that have been received, which could alter the final results. Elections officials have said they expect to rerun the ranked-choice voting tabulation next week, with absentee ballots included.
Adams had 32% of first-choice ballots, based on the incomplete results released on Election Day. Former MSNBC analyst Maya Wiley, a liberal civil rights lawyer, was at 22%, and former city sanitation chief Kathryn Garcia stood in third at 19%.
Andrew Yang, the former presidential candidate, was in a distant fourth place and conceded the race on the night of the election.
The ranked-choice system operates as a series of instant runoffs. The candidate in last place is eliminated, and his or her votes are redistributed to voters’ second choice. The process repeats until there are only two candidates remaining, and the one with a majority is declared the winner.
The winner of the Democratic primary will be a heavy favorite in November’s general election against Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa, the founder of the Guardian Angels civilian patrol group. Democratic voters outnumber Republicans in the United States’ most populous city by more than a six-to-one ratio.
While he is in somewhat of a holding pattern, Adams has already called on current Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration to begin meeting with the Democratic nominee as soon as one is declared, rather than waiting to start the transition after November’s vote. Adams argued that the problems facing the city are too serious to delay.
The next mayor will oversee the city’s arduous recovery from the coronavirus pandemic, which has been marred by a sharp spike in shootings. The city is also confronting deep-seated issues such as a lack of affordable housing, homelessness and wealth inequality.
The rise in crime dominated the campaign, providing an early look at how Democrats nationally may approach the issue of policing ahead of next year’s congressional midterm elections. Republicans have signaled they intend to portray Democrats as left-wing extremists who want to “defund the police,” a rallying cry echoed by some liberals last year amid nationwide protests over police brutality.
Adams, who had put public safety at the heart of his bid for mayor from the beginning of the race, vowed to beef up policing. Wiley, by contrast, argued for cutting one-sixth of the police department’s $6 billion budget and redirecting the money to mental health aid and other social services.
Any one of the three leading contenders would make history if elected mayor. Adams would be only the second Black mayor in city history, while Wiley would be the first Black woman and Garcia the first woman to hold the position.
(Reporting by Joseph Ax; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Jonathan Oatis)
