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“Eric Adams, the Brooklyn Borough president and a former police captain, was in the lead Wednesday to be New York City's next mayor. But even though voting is done, the race is far from over. It may take several weeks to find out who won the Democratic primary for mayor, with absentee ballots still trickling in and a new ranked-choice voting system allowing New Yorkers to list their top five preferences for mayor…
“Adams commanded 31.7% of voters' first choice preferences in the results released from Tuesday and early voting. Maya Wiley, the former counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio, was in second with 22.2%. Former sanitation department head Kathryn Garcia had 19.5% in third.” USA Today
Here’s our recent coverage of the NYC Mayor’s Race. The Flip Side
The right supports Adams’s pledge to be tough on crime, and criticizes ranked-choice voting.
“A victory for Adams would signal the electoral strength of the outer boroughs of New York City and the Democratic political machine that coalesced around his campaign. Adams handily won among black and Hispanic voters, as well as in four of the city’s five boroughs, placing third in Manhattan to Kathryn Garcia. ‘Social media does not pick a candidate,’ Adams said. ‘People on Social Security pick a candidate.’…
“Three of the top four candidates are moderate Democrats (at least by New York standards): Adams, Garcia, and Yang. Public safety proved a top priority for New York City voters. According to Manhattan Institute polling, four in ten voters who supported defunding the police wanted more cops in their neighborhood.”
Michael Hendrix, City Journal
“Starting in 1994, smarter policing under Mayors Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg made New York the safest big city in America. Those gains eroded under Mayor Bill de Blasio and accelerated last year with his weak response to riots, the elimination of bail, and the demonizing of the NYPD. Adams ran full tilt against the leftist agenda of Wiley, a de Blasio appointee who is now in second place in the vote count. He attacked her for wanting to slash NYPD’s budget and being open to the idea of taking their guns away…
“The [White] House is paying attention to the voter’s embrace of Adams. As Axios warns: ’Democrats, in private and public, are warning that rising crime — and the old and new progressive calls to defund the police — represent the single biggest threat to their electoral chances in 2022.’”
John Fund, National Review
“Real people with real lives are the ones who matter when it comes to elections and governance — not the self-selected crowd that dominates Twitter… This is important because the New York social-media clique is more likely than anyone else in this country to enthusiastically support causes like #DefundPolice, eliminating bail and figuring out new ways to coddle criminals…
“One thing the social-media clique didn’t particularly want to dwell on during the campaign was New York’s degenerating quality of life due to the decline of public safety…
“If he becomes mayor, Adams’ signature challenge will be to restore order to the streets and subways. He will face determined opposition to any tough-minded policies put in place to achieve that aim. To keep his eye on the ball, he will need an incredibly thick skin — and a crew of people around him who delete Twitter from their phones and keep reminding themselves who their real bosses are.”
John Podhoretz, New York Post
“Some want to enact ranked-choice voting across the U.S., but any change to our current system would be a mistake… In ranked-choice voting, candidates never command a true majority and so must win by cobbling together voting blocs that help secure a majority coalition. In New York City, Andrew Yang and fellow candidate Kathryn Garcia announced they would campaign together to help boost their second-preference voting numbers. Neither candidate was particularly strong, but with Yang out, Garcia’s chances of winning will increase…
“The whole process creates weak candidates who are forced to rely on eliminated candidates to secure victory… [By contrast] Majoritarian elections create the winning candidates who are broadly representative of the winning coalition but don’t satisfy any single bloc perfectly… Strong candidates are good for voters because they allow politicians to present a coherent vision for the country without fear of party reprisal…
“An essential feature of democracy is that when voters are unhappy, they can vote for change. Republicans and Democrats generally argue for a (mostly) coherent plan for the country. This makes it easy for voters to hold a party accountable… While we wait up to a month for the results of New York’s ranked-choice voting, we should take that time to push back against the effort to undermine our election system.”
Sean-Michael Pigeon, National Review
The left worries Adams will prioritize wealthy special interests, and supports ranked-choice voting.
The left worries Adams will prioritize wealthy special interests, and supports ranked-choice voting.
“If New York gets a Mayor Adams, he will be free to ignore those who did not help him get to his perch. That includes the media class, which he can deride as a bunch of lily-white elitists who don’t understand the struggle of a black man from the outer boroughs. Fair enough. But Adams, a wealthy landlord who owns multiple properties, long ago transcended the blue-collar pedigree he continually touts on the campaign trail. For the last twenty years, he has cozied up to the most influential real estate developers in the city, billionaires who wish, in the words of their old patron Mike Bloomberg, to make the city a luxury product…
“Most working-class blacks, Latinos, and Asians in New York are tenants. Adams does not want to protect them from sharp rent increases. His allegiance is to the landlords, who make up his donor base, and it’s this cash that insulates him from true popular pressure. One of the canniest politicians on the municipal scene, he can posture as a populist while doing the bidding of those who revile popular movements. For the capitalists who make up the permanent government of the city, Adams is something close to an ideal vessel.”
Ross Barkan, Jacobin
Regarding the focus on crime, “Murder rates that are rising even in places with huge law-enforcement budgets should be seen as evidence that reducing crime isn’t all about policing. The push to cut funding from police isn’t a push to ignore crime. It’s a push to consider other strategies — to fully fund the people and to address root causes of violence…
“Too many U.S. mayors focus (and spend) heavily on bringing sports franchises, businesses and upper-income people to their cities… We need to rebalance urban policy in the United States so that we are less obsessed with restaurants and hotels that serve only a small, upper-income set and more obsessed with the lives of everyone in our cities.”
Perry Bacon Jr., Washington Post
“If you told me last year that a Black Brooklyn elected official would win full-throated support from the New York Post and also run ads featuring beloved actor and longtime anti–police brutality activist Danny Glover, I would assume that that candidate would be the overwhelming favorite to win, with or without adopting any particular messaging I could possibly conceive, and regardless of the messaging flaws of his opponents. The fact that Adams instead won a bit less than a third of the vote in the first round of ranking, and still faces the possibility of losing in later rounds, suggests he may actually be a flawed candidate or one who emphasized the wrong message…
“Eric Adams was the law and order candidate and the police reform candidate. He has a multidecade record of making headlines attacking the leadership of the NYPD… What happened yesterday in New York was the most boring and predictable outcome—one that anyone who has even a glancing familiarity with the city’s politics would have predicted last month or even two years ago… contrarians looking to dunk on their left flank should stop intentionally conflating undesired outcomes with surprising ones.”
Alex Pareene, New Republic
“In the lead-up to New York City’s first citywide RCV election, some observers began to panic. Voters wouldn’t be able to handle it! Celebrity candidate Andrew Yang would use his name recognition to coast through on second- and third-place votes! The wide field made possible by RCV’s spoiler-free elections would sap New Yorkers’ interest; the candidates could barely fit on a debate stage, let alone deliver a comprehensible debate…
“Instead, what seemed like a low-interest election seems likely to draw more voters than the 2020 Democratic presidential primary and has surpassed the 2013 mayoral primary in New York City. Yang was among the first candidates to concede, having only won 12 percent of the vote. New Yorkers didn’t just handle it. They used the system to express a wide and complex range of preferences, using their first-choice votes to send a message of support to doomed candidates.”
Henry Grabar, Slate
