POLITICS
Eric Adams Builds Early Lead in Mayoral Race
Maya Wiley sits in second place after election night; results will take time
BY ROBERT POZARYCKI
It’s all over but the counting.
A roughly 75,000-vote
lead should give Brooklyn
Borough President Eric Adams
some comfort that he’s on
track toward winning the Democratic
nomination for New York
City mayor — but that isn’t a certainty
just yet.
In the old days, Adams would
have advanced to a two-person
runoff for the nomination with the
second-place fi nisher, civil rights
attorney Maya Wiley. But this is
a new era in New York, as voters
in the June 22 primary utilized
ranked-choice voting (RCV) in the
mayor’s race and other citywide
contests for the fi rst time — selecting
more than one candidate
for offi ce, in order of their preference.
The preliminary vote count from
the New York City Board of Elections
of all ballots cast in the early
voting period and on Primary Day
gave Adams a sizable advantage —
securing just under a third of all
votes cast (31.6%) with 253,234
fi rst-choice votes.
Wiley is a distant second with
177,722 (22.2%) fi rst-choice votes,
followed closely in third by former
Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn
Garcia with 155,812 (19.5%).
Adams, however, came away
sounding confi dent that he won
the race, though he acknowledged
all the counting that remains in
the race.
“We know there’s going to be 2s
and 3s and 4s, we know that. But
there’s something else we know:
That New York City said our fi rst
choice is Eric Adams,” Adams said
during his campaign party Tuesday
night.
Wiley said with confi dence that
the people have not yet spoken in
full.
“I don’t know what New Yorkers
have chosen tonight. Not any one
of us can because the votes are
still being counted,” she told supporters
at her campaign party. “I
will tell you what is true: Every
single vote will count. Every single
Eric Adams at his election night party on June 22.
New Yorker who voted will count.”
The three top vote-getters (Adams,
Wiley, Garcia) comprise
73.3% of the 799,827 early and
Primary Day fi rst-place votes cast.
With no one candidate having received
a clear majority, the race
now goes to ranked-choice assessment
of the remaining 26.7% of
votes cast.
Under the RCV system, each
voter gets to select up to fi ve candidates
in order of preference. If
no candidate secures a majority
of votes on the fi rst ballot, the ballots
are recounted in individual
rounds — with the candidate with
the least support in each round
eliminated. Voters who had their
fi rst candidate eliminated would
then have their lesser-choice votes
counted toward the candidate of
their choice. This system of counting
and eliminations goes on until
one candidate has achieved a majority
of votes.
The city’s Board of Elections will
now have to wade through 213,059
ballots to see the other choices
voters made in the mayor’s race.
Then there’s the more than 80,000
absentee/mailed ballots that New
Yorkers sent which have yet to be
counted at all.
In short, the city’s Board of Elections
has its work cut out for them.
With more than 300,000 votes to
be counted or recounted, it may
take several weeks before a defi nitive
winner of the mayor’s race is
determined.
Garcia and Wiley now hope
to pick up tens of thousands of
lesser-choice votes from voters
of eliminated candidates such
as entrepreneur Andrew Yang
(93,291 votes), City Comptroller
Scott Stringer (40,244 votes),
REUTERS/ANDREW KELLY
nonprofi t founder Dianne Morales
(22,221), former Citicorp executive
Ray McGuire (18,503) and former
Housing and Urban Development
Secretary Shaun Donovan
(17,903).
The questions are how many of
these voters bothered to rank additional
candidates, how many
ranked Adams on their ballots —
and whether Garcia or Wiley gain
enough lesser votes to overcome
the gap.
One thing is certain: whoever
wins the Democratic primary for
mayor will face Curtis Sliwa in the
November general election. The
Guardian Angels founder and radio
talk show host won the Republican
nomination for mayor outright
on Tuesday.
Note: Figures refl ect preliminary
numbers from the New York City
Board of Elections on June 23.
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