Eric Adams, the winner of New York’s Democratic mayoral primary, pledged to make the city’s recovery from the pandemic a model for the nation.
“I know how we can turn around not only New York, but America,” Adams, 60, the Brooklyn borough president, said Wednesday during an interview on CBS. “New York is going to show America how to run cities.”
The Associated Press called the race for Adams on Tuesday, two weeks after the election. He won 50.5% of the vote, edging out former sanitation commissioner Kathryn Garcia, who received 49.5% after eight rounds of voting. It was a difference of 8,426 votes.
Adams held off a crowded field of challengers with a campaign focused on reducing crime and restoring the quality of life in a city that was pummeled by the coronavirus pandemic. A 22-year veteran of the New York Police Department, Adams helped turn the race into a referendum on public safety just one year after nationwide Black Lives Matter protests spurred calls to defund the police.
The June 22 primary marked the first citywide use of the ranked-choice voting system, allowing voters to select as many as five candidates in order of preference. But the process did not go smoothly, as an error by the city’s Board of Elections partway through the tally threw ballot counting into disarray and led to preemptive lawsuits by many of the candidates.
Tuesday’s tally of 937,699 votes, 14% of which came from absentee ballots, showed Adams with a lead of just one percentage point over Garcia. Adams got 30.8% of voters’ top choices, with civil-rights lawyer Maya Wiley garnering 21.3% of first-choice votes and Garcia snagging 19.6% of first-choice votes. Garcia only overtook Wiley in the seventh round, by around 350 votes, after tech entrepreneur Andrew Yang was eliminated. When Wiley was eliminated, 72% of her votes went to Garcia over Adams—but that wasn’t enough to overtake Adams’s early lead.
Despite the closeness of the race, Adams was quick to position himself as the mayor-in-waiting and cast his win as a the first sign of change in the national Democratic Party. He suggested an early transition and said he’d meet with his candidates for police commissioner in July. He’s pledged to appoint a woman to run the police force.
On Wednesday, Garcia conceded in a speech near the Women’s Rights Pioneers Monument in Manhattan’s Central Park. She would have been the city’s first-ever female mayor.
“I am proof that outsiders without backing of the political establishment and determined women are a force to be reckoned with,” she said. “While women have a seat at a table, we have yet to sit at the head of it, but I know that day is coming soon.”
Wiley called a press conference for Wednesday after thanking her staff, endorsers, and volunteers for their support and said she will “have more to say about the next steps shortly.”
Given that Democrats outnumber Republicans by 7-to-1 in New York City, the winner of the Democratic primary is likely to win the general election in November against Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa, founder of the Guardian Angels anti-crime group. A general election victory would make Adams the city’s second Black mayor, after David Dinkins held the post in the early 1990s.
Sliwa said he was ready to go up against Adams in November.
The next mayor of New York will have to lead the city out of a pandemic-induced economic crisis. Although 52% of residents are fully vaccinated, only a fifth of office workers have returned. Tourism is depressed and many small businesses remain closed. The city’s unemployment rate stood at 10.9% in May, compared with 5.8% nationally.
With most of the city ranking Adams and Garcia at the top of their ballots, the vote showed a clear message that residents backed candidates who stressed problem-solving over ideology.
“It was the moderates, not the progressives who were ascendant in this mayoral primary, which reflected the focus of Adams and Garcia upon common sense solutions, not ideological purity, in regard to promoting safety with justice on crime and managerial competence,” said Albany-based political consultant Bruce Gyory.
Adams made policing and crime the centerpiece of his campaign and the race. He also came out against progressives’ calls to cut spending on police departments that arose last summer in the wake of the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police.
“Eric is a person of strong character who will not be bullied by special interests or ideologues,” said Kathryn Wylde, chief executive officer of the Partnership for New York City, a business group that represents JPMorgan Chase & Co., Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and dozens of other companies. “His election is the first step in assuring that New York City remains a city of opportunity and inclusive growth.”