FOR BREAKING NEWS VISIT WWW.QNS.COM JUNE 24, 2021 • THE QUEENS COURIER 25
Adams builds wide lead, but plenty
of counting remains in mayoral race
BY ROBERT POZARYCKI
editorial@qns.com
@QNS
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 rankedchoice
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.
Th e 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; he secured just under a
third of all votes cast (31.6 percent) with
253,234 fi rst-choice votes.
Wiley is a distant second with 177,722
(22.2 percent) fi rst-choice votes, followed
closely in third by former Sanitation
Commissioner Kathryn Garcia with
155,812 (19.5 percent).
Adams, however, came away sounding
confi dent that he won the race, though
he acknowledged that plenty of rankedchoice
votes have yet to be counted.
“We know there’s going to be twos and
threes and fours; 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, on the other hand, 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 New Yorker
who voted will count.”
Th e three top vote-getters comprise
73.3 percent 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 rankedchoice
assessment of the remaining 26.7
percent 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 based on voters’ fi rstchoice
selections, 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 second-choice votes counted toward
the candidate of their choice. Th is system
of counting and eliminations goes on
until one candidate has achieved a majority
of votes.
Th e city’s Board of Elections will now
have to wade through 213,059 ballots to
see the other choices voters made in the
mayoral race. Th en 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 could potentially 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), nonprofi t founder
Dianne Morales (22,221), former Citicorp
executive Ray McGuire (18,503) and former
Housing and Urban Development
REUTERS/Andrew Kelly
Secretary Shaun Donovan (17,903).
Th e 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. Th e Guardian Angels founder
and radio talk show host won the
Republican nomination for mayor outright
on Tuesday.
Editor’s note: Figures refl ect preliminary
numbers from the New York City Board
of Elections, posted Wednesday morning,
June 23, with 96.62 percent of scanners
reported.
Eric Adams speaks at a New York City primary mayoral election night party in Brooklyn, June 22, 2021.
link
/WWW.QNS.COM
link
