Adams Heads Into Weekslong NYC Vote Count With Lead Over Rivals

(Bloomberg) -- Brooklyn Borough President and former police captain Eric Adams holds a comfortable lead after the first round of counting in the New York Democratic mayoral primary, buoyed by a focus on law enforcement in a crime- and pandemic-battered city. Yet voters face a long wait to learn who will be their next mayor.

With nearly all the precincts reporting early Wednesday, Adams had about 31% of the vote, followed by civil rights lawyer Maya Wiley with 22% and former city Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia with about 20%. Due to ranked-choice voting and a large number of absentee ballots, it may be weeks before a final result is announced.

At a time when the issue of police brutality is driving much of the nation’s policy agenda, Adams managed to balance his former career as a cop with his record of pushing for NYPD reform after being assaulted by an officer as a teen.

“My journey began on the floor of the 103rd Precinct when I was beaten,” Adams said. “Now I’m going to be the mayor of this city.”

“This coalition that we built, Black, White, Brown, Asian, Muslims, Jews, Christians -- this amazing coalition -- Italians, Russian-speaking, Irish, they called me the United Nations candidate,” he said. “All these different groups bringing this city together, we don’t need a divider, we need a unifier.”

Adams, 60, isn’t the Democratic nominee yet. Despite a 9-point advantage over second-place Wiley, Adams must survive 12 rounds of subsequent vote counts to win the primary in the ranked-choice voting system being used for the first time in the city’s mayoral contest.

As expected, turnout was slightly higher than in the 2013 primary, but a change in the election calendar, plus a stormy Election Day, may have depressed voter enthusiasm somewhat.

At 7 a.m., with 96.62% of scanners reported, the New York City Board of Elections had tallied 799,827 votes in the Democratic primary, according to unofficial Election Night results. Adams won 253,234 first-choice votes, which included ballots cast early and on primary election day but not absentee ballots. The board said it had distributed 221,008 absentee ballots, 90,763 of which had been returned. Still, other absentee ballots postmarked by Tuesday will be counted by the elections board if they are received by June 29.

Former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang, who was fourth in a pack of 13 candidates in the first round, conceded defeat late Tuesday and dropped out. The retreat capped a remarkable tumble from front-runner in the early polls to also ran.

“I’m a numbers guy, I’m someone who traffics in what happens in the numbers, and I am not going to be New York City mayor,” said Yang, in a somber speech to supporters on Tuesday night.

Republicans nominated Curtis Sliwa, founder of the red beret-wearing Guardian Angels, a crime prevention group, over restaurateur Fernando Mateo. But Sliwa faces long odds to win November’s general election in the overwhelmingly Democratic city.

If Adams prevails in the general election, he would be the second Black man to hold the mayor’s office in the city’s history since David Dinkins in the early 1990s. If Wiley, 57, or Garcia, 51, overtake Adams, they would be the city’s first female mayor.

“Women came out because you know what? It is time for women to lead this city,” Garcia told supporters on Tuesday night. “I know how to make us safe, I know how to rebuild this economy, and I know how to do it as a New York with hustle, with sheer hard work, because that’s what got me here.”

Unofficial voting results show a city divided by the leading contenders. First-choice votes showed Adams took a commanding lead in Staten Island, East Harlem, the Bronx and the outer regions of Brooklyn, the most populous New York borough, where he’s worked as president since 2014. Adams took 66% of first-choice votes in the Brownsville neighborhood where he was born, according to unofficial results released by the city’s board of elections.

Wiley saw a surge of votes in the inner regions of Brooklyn, as well as the wealthier parts of Queens. Garcia dominated in Manhattan, except for in Chinatown and the Financial District, where Yang took the leading position in first-choice votes.

Crime and inequality were the main issues in the last few weeks of campaigning. Voters said that street and transit crime made them feel like they were in a 1980s rerun. Yet many also expressed hope that the next resident of Gracie Mansion would better reflect the ethnic melting pot of the U.S.’s most populous city.

At age 15, Adams was arrested on a charge of criminal trespassing and beaten by officers. Years later, he joined the New York Police Department and spent 22 years on the force, rising to the rank of captain. He helped co-found a reform group called 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care. Adams was elected to the state Senate in 2006, holding his seat for seven years until he became the first Black Brooklyn borough president in 2013.

In the final months of the race, crime and policing became the top issue, buoying Adams’ candidacy. The debate around policing shifted dramatically as the city moved away from a summer of pandemic and protests. Conversations about police reform in New York City and calls to defund the police -- which arose in the wake of George Floyd’s murder -- gave way to concerns about shootings and violent crime as the city reopened in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Crime on the whole is down historically, but shooting incidents are up 64% in 2021 over the same period last year and hate crimes have more than doubled, according to New York Police Department statistics.

Despite national moves among Democrats to oppose tough-on-crime stances, Adams maintained that traditional policing was the solution to the rise in crime. He backed a modified version of stop-and-frisk -- which disproportionately affected young Black men -- and said he wants to restore a plainclothes police unit tasked with confiscating illegal weapons that was disbanded after complaints that it used excessive force.

Reform, he said, would come through his leadership of the department and better training rather than taking away money from the police force.

At the same time Wiley, former counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio and the highest-polling progressive candidate, has suggested a cut of at least $1 billion from the police budget. She proposed reinvesting the money in communities and social services.

Many voters don’t want to see deep cuts to the police force, even if they support more accountability for the NYPD. They fear crime won’t ebb if there are fewer officers.

The city is using ranked choice balloting for elections for the mayor, city council members, borough presidents and city comptroller. Voters selected just one candidate for Manhattan district attorney, a state election.

With 90% of the precincts reporting Tuesday night, Brad Lander was leading the race for city Comptroller in the first round of counting with 31% of the vote, followed by City Council speaker Corey Johnson.

For the Manhattan district attorney, former prosecutors Alvin Bragg and Tali Farhadian Weinstein were leading the race with all precincts reporting. Bragg had 34% of the vote and Farhadian Weinstein had 31%, but the thousands of absentee ballots that remained outstanding meant the race was too close to call.

The Board of Elections will announce the subsequent rounds of voting, including early voting and Election Day data, in a week, but those will also be unofficial. Further rounds will be conducted once a week until all absentee ballots are counted, with the final outcome announced as late as July 12.

Voters’ second-choice picks could be key to the final results. That’s because candidates who come in last are eliminated, and their voters’ second choices get distributed as if they were top picks to other candidates.

Come-from-behind winners have happened just 15 times over 375 ranked-choice elections in the U.S. since 2004, according to data compiled by advocacy group Fair Vote. Of those, the second-place candidate won 13 times and the third-place candidate twice.

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