Curtis Sliwa, Republican candidate, campaigns on the liberal West Side. (Published 2021) (2024)

5 takeaways from the New York City mayoral primary.

With Democrats far outnumbering Republicans, the Democratic primary winner would be the heavy favorite in November.

With nearly 90 percent of the votes counted, Mr. Adams led in four of the city’s five boroughs — everywhere but Manhattan — though the final results, including the first-ever use of ranked-choice voting for the city, are expected to take weeks.

Here are five takeaways from the mayoral primary:

1. Eric Adams is leading after defining himself on public safety.

A former New York Police Department captain and the current Brooklyn borough president, Mr. Adams framed his candidacy from the start as that of a blue-collar Black man who could battle both rising crime and the city’s history of discriminatory policing.

Speaking often of himself in the third person — telling “the Eric Adams story” — he paced the field in centering his campaign on public safety at a moment when a spike in shootings has raised anxiety among New Yorkers. Recent polls have shown that crime emerged as the top issue for voters.

“I’m not running just to be the mayor, I’m running to save my city,” he said before the polls closed Tuesday.

As of Wednesday morning, he led with roughly 30 percent of the vote — nearly 10 percentage points ahead of his closest rivals — though the final results will be decided in the coming weeks through ranked-choice voting.

“What a moment, what a moment, what a moment,” Mr. Adams said, in a speech celebrating being the “first choice” on Tuesday.

Pre-election polls had shown Mr. Adams consolidating a plurality of Black support, even with three other prominent Black candidates in the field, Ms. Wiley, Ray McGuire and Dianne Morales, who is Afro-Latino.

And on Tuesday his support was indeed strongest in Black communities in Brooklyn and Queens, as he paired his relatively moderate platform with appeals based on his up-from-the-bootstraps biography as a Black leader who made it in New York.

While the Democratic Party has been seized with an internal debate about how to tackle the historical mistreatment by police of Black and Latino New Yorkers, Mr. Adams defined his candidacy firmly in opposition to the “defund the police” movement, saying at one point that was a conversation being pushed by “a lot of young white affluent people.”

He has leaned on his years in the N.Y.P.D. for credibility on the issue of crime and had some of his sharpest exchanges of the race with Ms. Wiley over the issue, at one point accusing her of wanting “to slash the Police Department budget and shrink the police force at a time when Black and brown babies are being shot in our streets.”

2. Because of ranked-choice voting, the counting isn’t over yet.

In one of the more dramatic developments of the race, Ms. Garcia struck up a late alliance with Andrew Yang, the former 2020 Democratic candidate for president, in the final weekend before the primary, as they campaigned together and he urged his voters to rank her second on their ballots (she did not return the favor).

That could benefit Ms. Garcia as she narrowly trailed Ms. Wiley as of early Wednesday, and second-choice support from Yang backers could vault her ahead.

The 2021 race is New York’s first time using ranked-choice voting citywide and it has injected uncertainty into the process.

Olivia Lapeyrolerie, a former adviser to Mayor Bill de Blasio, said the system had “completely upended any notion of ideological purity.”

“Democratic voters in this city aren’t wedded to labels but who they think is the best choice to lead our recovery,” she said.

For now, the chance for either Ms. Garcia or Ms. Wiley to catch Mr. Adams would seem to depend on having won the overwhelming support of the other’s backers.

Both candidates, at times, had leaned into running to be the first female mayor of the city, though they never campaigned in tandem as Ms. Garcia did with Mr. Yang. (On Tuesday, Beyoncé’s “Run the World (Girls)” was playing at Ms. Wiley’s election night party; Ms. Garcia removed a white blazer onstage to reveal a shirt that said “feminist” on it.)

“It is time for a woman to lead this city,” Ms. Garcia said. She urged patience ahead of complete tabulation. “This is going to be not only about the 1s but the 2s and 3s.”

Ms. Garcia’s speech was a reminder of her relative newcomer status on the political scene, after a New York Times editorial board endorsem*nt helped her emerge as a favored candidate of the city’s educated elites. On Tuesday, she couldn’t help but remark on the literal glare of the television stage lights. “By the way, they are awfully bright right now,” she said.

3. Andrew Yang went from first to fizzled.

The Andrew Yang for mayor boomlet started, fittingly enough, with a tweet.

It was the night of the 2020 primary in New Hampshire and just as Mr. Yang was dropping out of the presidential race, Howard Wolfson, the longtime political consigliere to Michael R. Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor, tweeted that Mr. Yang “would make a very interesting candidate for NYC Mayor in 21.”

Mr. Yang’s optimism-infused and energetic candidacy did make waves from the moment he entered. He quickly raised money from loyal supporters, struck up some surprise alliances, including with leaders in the Orthodox Jewish community, zoomed to the front of early polls and attracted an overwhelming amount of media attention.

The bright glare of that spotlight seemed to dim Mr. Yang’s star and on Tuesday he had lagged to fourth place and conceded the race. “Celebrity candidates tend to fade,” said Jonathan Rosen, a Democratic strategist in the city.

The outsized attention on Mr. Yang did reshape the race. Patrick Gaspard, a veteran New York political operative, lamented on Twitter that it “allowed other candidates to be woefully unexamined until close to the end.”

In those final weeks, Mr. Yang had flashed a sharp edge as he sparred with Mr. Adams over both policy and personal matters, highlighting questions about where exactly the Brooklyn borough president lives.

“Turned out I was right — he was an interesting candidate,” Mr. Wolfson said on Tuesday. “But interesting does not always equal successful.”

4. Maya Wiley and the progressive momentum stalled in the first ballot.

At the start of 2021, the left-leaning lane in the mayor’s race looked to be dangerously overcrowded. But the stars seemed to align about as well as possible for Ms. Wiley’s progressive candidacy in the closing weeks of the campaign.

An allegation of sexual harassment from two decades ago against Scott Stringer, the city comptroller, paralyzed his campaign in late April, as some early backers abandoned him. On Tuesday, the collapse was so complete that he was in fifth places in parts of the Upper West Side — his home turf.

Then Dianne Morales, who had inspired a left-wing following for her unabashed presentation of progressivism, was hobbled by internal problems, including a unionization effort by her campaign staff that devolved into an acrimonious public fight.

Then Ms. Wiley won the endorsem*nts of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortezand Senator Elizabeth Warren.

But the results on Tuesday showed that progressives struggled to form a winning coalition in the mayor’s race with three of the top four finishers — Mr. Adams, Mr. Yang and Ms. Garcia — all running either more moderate or technocratic campaigns.

For Ms. Wiley, mathematical hopes are still alive that she could overtake Mr. Adams as more ballots, and second choices, are counted.

5. Progressives hold hope elsewhere even if Adams wins.

While Mr. Adams’s lead was dispiriting to some on the left, New York’s progressives did hold out hope in some other key down-ballot races.

In Manhattan, the district attorney’s race was too close to call with Alvin Bragg, a progressive, holding a narrow lead over Tali Farhadian Weinstein. Ms. Weinstein, a more moderate Democrat, had injected more than $8 million of her own money into her campaign in the race’s final weeks, earning the ire of progressives for the spending and her ties to Wall Street.

In the city comptroller race to replace the termed out Mr. Stringer, Brad Lander, a progressive from Park Slope, Brooklyn, led Corey Johnson, the City Council speaker, by a similar margin as Mr. Adams led Ms. Wiley in the mayor’s race. Like Ms. Wiley, Mr. Lander had been endorsed by Ms. Ocasio-Cortez and Ms. Warren.

Jumaane Williams, the current New York City public advocate and an outspoken progressive, cruised through his primary and won roughly 70 percent of the vote.

In one of the marquee City Council races for the left, Tiffany Cabán, who previously ran for Queens district attorney, was leading by a wide margin with backing of the Democratic Socialists of America. Other progressive favorites were leading in council seats, including Sandy Nurse and Jennifer Gutierrez.

In Buffalo, New York’s second-largest city, India Walton, a Democratic Socialist, was poised to upset the four-term incumbent Democrat, Byron Brown. Mr. Brown is a former New York Democratic Party state chairman and a close ally of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo.

Katie Glueck and Michael Gold contributed reporting.

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Eric Adams leads in initial tally, calling it a win for ‘the little guy.’

“I am going to be your mayor,” said Mr. Adams, who led the field in early results. He added: “The little guy won,” even though final results were not expected for several weeks.

The party atmosphere was exuberant, and as Mr. Adams’s lead grew, the mood became looser and supporters took to the dance floor at Schimanski nightclub. The crowd included Black and Latino leaders, members of the Southeast Asian community and Orthodox Jewish attendees.

As he has throughout the contest, Mr. Adams focused on how his life story — growing up poor, being abused by the police and then becoming an officer who spoke out against discriminatory policing — made him a “blue-collar” candidate who could identify with the greatest number of New Yorkers.

He also focused on the other message that helped him rise to the top of the polls: fighting crime and improving public safety. And he took shots at his rivals, saying that New York did not need academic or philosophical debates about policing. He also made a veiled reference to Andrew Yang as a celebrity candidate.

“Social media does not pick a candidate,” Mr. Adams said. “People on Social Security pick a candidate.”

India Walton stuns longtime incumbent in Buffalo mayoral primary.

The challenger, India B. Walton, is a nurse and community activist who ran with the support of the Democratic Socialists of America and the Working Families Party. When The Associated Press called the race Wednesday morning, Ms. Walton was leading Byron Brown, a longtime member of the Democratic establishment, by 7 percentage points, or about 1,500 votes, with all of the in-person ballots counted.

Should Ms. Walton, 38, triumph in the general election in November — a likely result in heavily Democratic Buffalo — she would be the first female mayor in Buffalo’s history and the first socialist mayor of a major American city since 1960, when Frank P. Zeidler stepped down as Milwaukee’s mayor.

Her victory came decades after the country’s most prominent democratic socialist, Senator Bernie Sanders, served as mayor of Burlington, Vt. Mr. Sanders was mayor for eight years before he was elected to Congress and has run for president twice as a Democrat.

Ms. Walton celebrated her victory in a jubilant call to her mother that was captured on video, yelling, “Mommy, I won. Mommy, I’m the mayor of Buffalo. Well, not until January, but, yeah.”

Mr. Brown, who once led the state’s Democratic Party and is a close ally of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, declined to concede on Tuesday night despite the margin separating him from Ms. Walton.

“We’re going to make sure every single vote is counted,” he said. (Ms. Walton’s campaign estimated that there were about 1,500 absentee ballots outstanding.)

Ms. Walton showed no such hesitation in declaring victory, highlighting what she said were the race’s national ramifications. She said the stunning outcome would “resound here in Buffalo and throughout the nation, showing that a progressive platform that puts people over profit is both viable and necessary.”

“Tonight’s result proves that Buffalonians demand community-minded, people-focused government, and we’re ready to serve them,” Ms. Walton said in a statement. “For too long, we’ve seen our city work for politicians, for developers, for the police union, but not for ordinary working families. In our city, everyone will have a seat at the table.”

Ms. Walton has said her priorities as mayor would include adopting so-called sanctuary city rules to safeguard undocumented immigrants, introducing more robust protections for tenants and ending the role of police officers in most mental health emergency calls.

She has also criticized Mr. Brown’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic and helped lead protests in the city last year over the police killing of George Floyd.

Mr. Brown, 62, did not campaign vigorously, according to his opponents, and he refused to debate Ms. Walton. He has appeared regularly with Mr. Cuomo at the governor’s news conferences in Western New York to promote the state’s economic reopening.

Ms. Walton, in turn, relied on an intense grass-roots organizing operation, a formidable fund-raising effort and backing from some of the governor’s most vocal foes, including the Working Families Party and Cynthia Nixon, who waged an unsuccessful primary campaign against Mr. Cuomo in 2018.

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The N.Y. City Council is poised for an overhaul, though primary outcomes remain unknown.

In most of the races — which are crowded with candidates vying for open seats — no winner was expected to be declared. Absentee ballots have yet to be counted (more than 200,000 were requested), and ranked-choice selections still need to be tabulated. Official results from the Board of Elections are not likely until mid-July.

But the Council is guaranteed to have an overhaul after November’s general election, with all 51 seats on the ballot, and a new officeholder guaranteed in 32 of them.

The Council’s large turnover comes in large part from term limits that prevent members who have served at least two terms from running again, though a handful of them were on Tuesday’s ballot seeking a different office.

Many of the incumbents seeking re-election faced primary challengers. A handful of them are relatively new to the job, having only won special elections earlier this year, and faced challengers that they just recently edged out.

The Council’s top job will also be open: The current speaker, Corey Johnson, was running for city comptroller and is leaving office. The Council’s members choose their leader, who plays a key role in setting the Council’s agenda and negotiating with the mayor over the city budget. Electing a speaker will be one of the first ways that the winners of Council seats will exert their influence, Mr. Johnson said.

“The Council is going to have to do real oversight over new commissioners that are going to be chosen by whoever the mayor is,” Mr. Johnson said. “So it’s a hugely consequential election.”

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Here are scenes from election parties around New York.

Energized by her showing in the mayoral primary, Maya Wiley says, ‘New York is on fire.’

Arguing that she still had “a path to victory,” Ms. Wiley said that “50 percent of the votes are about to be recalculated,” given the subsequent rounds of vote tallying still to come.

“Votes are still being counted,” she said. “Every single vote will count.”

Ms. Wiley’s advisers argued that she had built a coalition that could challenge the Democratic Party machine that buoyed Mr. Adams.

“He doesn’t expand the electorate,” said Jon Paul Lupo, a senior adviser to Ms. Wiley, who said the campaign believed she would earn more second- and third-place votes than Mr. Adams would, and could emerge victorious in later rounds. Ms. Wiley held a narrow lead early Wednesday over Kathryn Garcia, who was in third. Andrew Yang dropped out of the race after lagging far behind in early returns.

Practically bouncing with excitement was one of her top supporters and advisers, Michael Blake, a former Bronx assemblyman who is now vice chair of the Democratic National Committee, and who helped rally Black supporters on Friday on the eve of Juneteenth by telling them, “Just because a guy is Black doesn’t mean he’s the best choice for Black people.”

“This is the people sending a message,” Mr. Blake said. He and other top campaign advisers said precincts where they expected their candidate to do well had not reported results yet and that turnout was higher than expected in those areas. At the same time, they believed Mr. Adams would be hurt by lower turnout in places like southeast Queens and Central Brooklyn.

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Trailing on primary night, Kathryn Garcia says she’s been counted out before.

“When I got into it, people said, ‘Well, I know you would be the best mayor, but I’m just not sure you can win.’ Or, ‘Women haven’t ever won the race for mayor.’”

Some even said, “commissioners aren’t mayors,” she added.

“Literally, what they’re talking about is you have no favors to call in,” she said. “Which means that when we take this home I also don’t have any favors to pay.”

With more than 80 percent of precincts reporting, Ms. Garcia had 20 percent of the vote, behind Maya Wiley’s nearly 22 percent and Eric Adams’s nearly 31 percent.

Voters in this election were allowed to rank up to five candidates. When the Board of Elections begins counting the absentee ballots in a couple weeks, lower-polling candidates will be eliminated. Voters who chose those lower-polling candidates as their first choices will have their subsequent choices counted instead.

“This will change a lot with the twos and threes, so I am not giving up on her chances,” said Liz Krueger, the Upper East Side-based state senator who backed Ms. Garcia’s campaign.

Ms. Garcia is not giving up yet either.

“As expected, this is going to be a ranked-choice election,” she said, referencing the fact that no candidate was likely to earn 50 percent of the vote in the first round and win outright. “We’re not going to know a whole lot more tonight than we know now.”

She thanked her family, her supporters, her team, and, before leaving the stage, said, “You know, I think we need to party like it’s 1999.” Music by U2, which she dreams of playing at her inauguration, blasted through the sound system.

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The embattled mayor of Rochester, who had been under indictment, loses handily.

Ms. Warren will not be running under any other party line in November, all but assuring that Mr. Evans, who gained popularity for his work on the city school board, will become mayor in a city that leans heavily Democratic.

Ms. Warren, who was first elected in 2013, had came under attack last year after her administration mishandled the death of Daniel Prude, a Black man who had been placed in a hood by the police. It took months for city officials to make body-camera footage of his death public, leading to accusations of a cover-up, the resignation of the city’s police chief and calls for Ms. Warren to step down.

Shortly after, she was indicted on two unrelated felony campaign finances charges that threatened to remove her from office if she was convicted.

The controversies would not end there. Last month, her husband was arrested after the police said they found drugs and guns during searches of his car and home, and was accused of being part of a midlevel cocaine trafficking ring. Ms. Warren was not charged with a crime.

Ms. Warren, who was vying for a third term, is the first female and second African-American mayor of Rochester, a city of about 200,000 people in Western New York.

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Andrew Yang ends his campaign after a poor showing.

“Our city was in crisis and we believed we could help,” he told supporters gathered at a Manhattan hotel.

But as a self-described “numbers guy,” he said, the outlook for his campaign was bleak.

“I am not going to be mayor of New York City based on the numbers that have come in tonight,” he said. “I am conceding this race, though we’re not sure ultimately who the next mayor is going to be. Whoever that person is, I will be very happy to work with them to help improve the lives of the 8.3 million people who live in our great city, and I encourage other people to do the same.”

Mr. Yang said he believed his supporters had been drawn to a central message of his campaign: that “politics as usual was not working.” He said he also believed that his campaign had influenced the debate over the priorities that will shape the city’s future. Those, he said, included elevating the discussion of cash relief for families, an issue he also promoted in the 2020 presidential race, and the push to reopen schools. He also said he had helped focus attention on a rise in attacks on people of Asian descent.

He praised his ability to draw many small donors and cited his alliance with Kathryn Garcia, a fellow mayoral candidate and former sanitation commissioner, as a positive.

“I thought we could elevate each other and give New York City a better chance of leadership that I was excited about,” he said.

Mr. Yang was frequently challenged during the campaign by other candidates and journalists over what sometimes appeared to be his loose grasp of some aspects of what city government does.

Mr. Yang acknowledged on Tuesday that “there was so much about New York City” that he did not know.

“I sometimes would come home to Evelyn and say, ‘Hey, have you visited this neighborhood? Have you been here?’” he said, adding that he and his wife would seek to contribute to “public life in New York City and beyond.”

Raymond McGuire stops short of conceding, as Shaun Donovan thanks supporters.

“It’s not about me,” Mr. McGuire. “It’s about we.”

He took his time thanking his supporters before posing for selfies with a long line of supporters that snaked through the restaurant, the Red Rooster in Harlem.

Earlier in the night, supporters were optimistic that what had become a long-shot bid might still turn into a triumph.

Michelle Jean, a friend and mentee of Mr. McGuire’s, said she felt gleeful voting for him on Tuesday. “I’d swim up and down the Hudson River for him,” she said. “He’s an extraordinary human being.”

Meanwhile, Shaun Donovan’s family, friends, and staff members crowded into their campaign headquarters in Brooklyn. The results were coming in on a projector, but most people weren’t even looking at them. Instead, they were talking, eating, cheering, and hugging against the backdrop of a live band and a room filled with blue, orange, and white balloons.

Lucas Donovan, Mr. Donovan’s son, described how the campaign had become a family affair. Mr. Donovan’s niece, Willa Gilbert-Goldstein, 19, who had been campaigning since the early morning, had gone to every borough on Tuesday. With a huge smile on her face, she said, “This campaign brought people together after a year of being apart.”

Shortly after the polls officially closed, the lights came on and Mr. Donovan walked in to people chanting “Go, Shaun, Go!” He slowly made his way to the stage, stopping to hug old friends and take photos, before addressing the friends and family in the room alongside his wife and two sons. “I’m proud that we chose the politics of progress,” he said.