Adams Leads NYC Poll, Targets No. 2 Garcia: Election Update

(Bloomberg) -- With a week until the New York primary election, a new poll has Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams and former Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia leading the race to be mayor of the largest U.S. city.

More than $75 million has been spent on the election. Early voting began over the weekend and runs through June 20. More than 32,000 people have voted, according to the city’s election board. Mayoral candidates will meet June 16 for the final televised Democratic debate before the June 22 primary.

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Latest Poll Numbers

Adams was the first choice of 24% of likely Democratic voters in a Marist Poll conducted June 3 to June 9. Garcia came in second with 17%, followed by civil-rights lawyer Maya Wiley with 15%. Former presidential candidate Andrew Yang, the early frontrunner, was in fourth place with 13%.

The poll, sponsored by WNBC, Telemundo 47 and Politico, was conducted via phone with 876 likely Democratic voters. It had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.8 percentage points.

Adams was the first choice among all demographic groups, except for White residents, likely Democratic primary voters under the age of 45, those who identify as very liberal or liberal, and Jewish voters. Garcia was first for White, Jewish and liberal voters, while younger voters and those who identify as very liberal selected Wiley as their first choice. Adams was the first pick for 43% of Black respondents. He was preferred by likely Democratic primary voters in Brooklyn, the Bronx and Queens, while Garcia was favored in Manhattan, the poll said.

Still, due to the uncertainty around ranked-choice voting, “the contest involving the top-tier candidates remains fluid,” Lee Miringoff, director of the poll, said in a statement.

Adams Aims at Garcia

Adams pledged to fill 50% of his administration posts with minorities at a campaign stop on Monday organized to go after rival Garcia for her diversity record at the helm of the city’s sanitation department.

Adams stood with a group of city sanitation workers who have filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleging that women and minority employees were subject to unequal pay under Garcia, who led the department from 2014 to 2020.

“I’m not throwing dirt at anyone,” Adams said during the event.

Sanitation employees reached out to him to “highlight what she did in our agency,” he said. “If you cannot control one agency, how are you going to control all the agencies in our city?”

Garcia’s rise has threatened Adams’ campaign as the two go after the city’s more moderate voters. Many of the sanitation department’s employee unions, including the Teamsters Local 831, have endorsed Garcia.

“The race is tightening up; it’s between Eric and I, and this is when the mud-slinging starts,” Garcia said at a separate campaign event on Monday.

Republican Candidates Spend Little

The Democratic candidates for New York mayor have spent more than 80 times the amount Republican candidates have doled out for the race.

In a city where Democrats outnumber Republicans by 7-to-1, the winner of the Democratic primary is heavily favored to win the November general election.

Republicans Curtis Sliwa and Fernando Mateo will face off June 22 in a standard winner-takes-all race. Sliwa, founder of the Guardian Angels volunteer crime-prevention group, has the endorsement of former New York mayor and Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani. Mateo is a small business owner who has backing from the Manhattan Republican Party.

Through June 11, Mateo had spent $310,102 and Sliva had spent $288,226, for a combined total of $598,328. The top eight Democratic candidates have spent more than $52 million total, with nonprofit executive Dianne Morales spending the least, $1.2 million, campaign-finance reports show.

De Blasio Says Count May Take Awhile

Mayor Bill de Blasio said he was concerned with the ability of the city’s board of elections to handle ranked-choice voting, which asks voters to select their top five candidates instead of just one.

This is the first time the city will be using the voting process for a mayor’s race, though it has been used in City Council races. De Blasio pointed to the long lag times that occurred during earlier races. “It took a lot longer than I would have liked,” he said. “I am concerned that the count could take awhile.”

He said the city has been trying to work with the board “to make sure they have the support they needed.” De Blasio said he wasn’t concerned with low turnout rates in the first couple of days of early voting, and that residents are still waking up to the fact the primary election is just a week away. The city has more than 4 million registered Democratic and Republican voters.

Stringer Could Endorse Rival for Second Choice

City Comptroller Scott Stringer said he could endorse a rival candidate for second choice in the coming days.

“I have no plans to make an endorsement, but that could change,” Stringer said Monday during a televised interview with Bloomberg. “It’s something I was thinking about over the weekend. We’ll see how the next few days play.”

For the first time, New York City is using a ranked-choice system in its mayoral election. Voters will be asked to rank five candidates in the Democratic primary.

When asked whether he should be dropping out and giving a powerful endorsement to a progressive due to two accusations of sexual harassment, Stringer said the allegations date back decades and “have been unfortunate. It has had a big impact on the campaign,” he said. “I have never been in a race where I was ahead or I didn’t have turbulence.”

“I’m running to win,” he said.

Stringer pledged to focus on bringing down crime and put more teachers in classrooms.

Millions Left to Spend

The Democratic mayoral candidates have doled out $55 million on the race, and independent groups supporting them have reported another $25 million in expenditures, according to campaign-finance reports filed June 11. The candidates have more than $13 million left to spend, according to the latest campaign-finance filings.

Former Citigroup banker Ray McGuire has spent the most campaigning among the top eight Democrats, with little movement in the polls to show for it. McGuire, the only one not accepting public matching funds, spent $10.5 million through June 11, according to the city’s campaign finance board. Only 3% of respondents said they would rank McGuire first in the Marist Poll.

Adams is second in spending, with $9.4 million; followed by Stringer with $8.4 million and Yang with $8.1 million. Stringer had 7% of first-choice votes in the Marist Poll.

Garcia, who was endorsed by the New York Times and Daily News, raised the most new individual donations among the eight candidates in the latest filing period that ran from May 18 to June 7, according to the city’s campaign finance board. If elected, she would become New York’s first female mayor.

New Start NYC, which is supporting former city housing commissioner Shaun Donovan, has spent the most among independent political action committees. Most of the group’s $6.5 million came from Donovan’s father. Donovan got 3% in the Marist Poll. Groups supporting McGuire and Adams have both spent more than $5.6 million, while a Yang-backing group has spent $2.9 million.

Strokes Concert

U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez may have come late to publicly supporting a candidate in the mayor’s race, but she’s thrown her full force behind Wiley since endorsing the civil rights lawyer a week ago.

In a star-studded fundraising concert by the indie rock band The Strokes on Saturday, Ocasio-Cortez opened the show by joining hands with Wiley on stage. “New York is back!” she told the in-person, fully-vaccinated crowd inside the storied Irving Plaza concert hall.

The concert spoke to the momentum that Ocasio-Cortez’s backing has stirred in the final weeks before the mayor’s race to encourage progressive voters to coalesce behind one candidate.

The more moderate candidates -- Adams, Yang and Garcia -- have been leading the polls for weeks as many of the progressive candidates’ campaigns stumbled, including nonprofit executive Dianne Morales, whose staffers left over disputes with the candidate, and Stringer, who faces two allegations of sexual harassment, claims he denies.

Neutral Sharpton

Reverend Al Sharpton said he wouldn’t endorse a mayoral candidate on Saturday during a get-out-the-vote rally, despite previous pledges to publicly throw his weight behind one of the contenders. The civil-rights activist is influential in city politics.

Sharpton, who was among the last political figures holding out to endorse a candidate, did defend Adams on stage. “I’ve known Adams 35 years, he always was in Brooklyn,” said Sharpton, referencing recent questions about the candidate’s residency. Critics have claimed Adams spends most of his time in a New Jersey home he owns with his partner.

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