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      What We Know (So Far) About New York’s Altered Political Landscape

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      As Eric Adams has moderate Democrats feeling bullish, the City Council appears to be shifting leftward.In the end, the Yang Gang went bust.Andrew Yang entered the race for New York mayor in January as the front-runner, but his happy-go-lucky, antipolitical style of campaigning left him unable to hold onto voters’ confidence. As early results came in for the Democratic primary after polls closed on Tuesday, Mr. Yang was on track to finish in a distant fourth place. He’s since conceded.Still, that doesn’t necessarily mean that New Yorkers wanted a boldly ideological candidate either — or one with a wonky political approach. Eric Adams, a longtime Brooklyn politician and a former Republican, whose docket of endorsements and donors arguably looked more similar to Mr. Yang’s than any other candidate’s did and who similarly positioned himself as a no-nonsense Everyman, held a wide lead as early returns arrived.With 83 percent of precinct results in, Mr. Adams currently has 31.7 percent of the first-choice votes. He’s far from the certain winner: New York City elections are using a ranked-choice system this year for the first time, so it’ll probably take weeks to know who will be the Democratic nominee (a.k.a., the next mayor, almost guaranteed).But Mr. Adams is in a very strong position, meaning that even as the New York City Council has drifted leftward in recent years, its voters may choose a mayor with more moderate — and in some cases, even conservative-leaning — politics.“We always say people like divided government, and if you think of the Democratic Party as a very large and diverse party, we can see an element of divided government here,” said Christina Greer, a political scientist at Fordham University and host of “FAQ NYC,” a podcast about New York City politics.Maya Wiley, the leading progressive candidate in the race and Mr. Adams’s closest runner-up, is currently at 22.3 percent — just shy of 10 points behind Mr. Adams. Many elections experts consider a 10-point divide to be the threshold beyond which it becomes virtually impossible for a candidate to overtake the leader in subsequent rounds.If Mr. Adams’s numbers hold, he will outperform his already-strong showing in pre-election polls, demonstrating that he gained momentum only in the last days of the campaign, as Mr. Yang was losing his. Many lapsed Mr. Yang supporters appear to have gone for Mr. Adams instead.“We know that there’s going to be twos and threes and fours,” Mr. Adams told his supporters during a wide-ranging speech on Tuesday night. “But there’s something else we know. We know that New York City said, ‘Our first choice is Eric Adams.’”In the speech, Mr. Adams picked up on the major themes of his campaign, particularly public safety. Just a year after the City Council responded to activists by passing a budget that made major changes to police funding, Mr. Adams ran his campaign in direct opposition to the “defund” narrative.He insisted on both “prevention and intervention,” in campaign speeches, emphasizing his past as a police officer and his support for law enforcement, while also nodding to liberals’ demand for youth programs and other root-cause approaches to crime prevention. On education and business regulation, he has sounded many moderate-to-conservative notes, including robust support for charter schools. His campaign’s ties to conservative and business-friendly groups have drawn scrutiny.But Dr. Greer said that his authenticity and his direct appeals to working-class New Yorkers had seemingly gone a long way. “With eight years of Bill de Blasio and 12 years of Michael Bloomberg, I think people felt left out and ignored,” she said, making a particular note of Mr. Adams’s support outside Manhattan. “I think Adams really tapped into that effectively.”What we know, and when we’ll know morePartly in response to the coronavirus pandemic, election officials allowed any voter to request an absentee ballot in the primary, and about 220,000 New Yorkers did. The deadline for those ballots to be received at election offices isn’t until next week, and then the process of curing ballots will begin.Since election officials can’t move past tallying the first round until all ballots have been counted, there’s no way for them to release more than first-round results until July 9.From there, the complex but ruthlessly simple math of ranked-preference tallying will be executed swiftly, and the winner will be declared.Possibly working in Mr. Adams’s favor is the fact that very few other candidates banded together in strategic coalitions. The one exception is the 11th-hour pact made by Mr. Yang and Kathryn Garcia, who is currently just behind Ms. Wiley, at 19.5 percent. In the final weeks of the race, when Mr. Adams was seen as the front-runner, some progressives mounted an “anyone but Adams” campaign, but the other candidates didn’t formally get behind it. At this point, he would have to have performed dismally in second-choice tallies and lower to lose the election.Is the City Council tilting further left?Put together, Mr. Yang, Mr. Adams and Ms. Garcia — the most prominent centrist candidates — accounted for more than 60 percent of voters’ first-choice picks. Ms. Wiley, Scott Stringer and Dianne Morales, the three progressives, received a combined total of closer to 30 percent.Still, whoever enters Gracie Mansion will have to contend with a New York City Council that appears to be on a leftward trajectory. Progressives gained significant clout during Bill de Blasio’s eight years as mayor, and Tuesday’s primary may have pushed it even further in that direction.Most races remain uncalled, but an array of progressive candidates appeared to be strongly positioned as results came in. Tiffany Cabán, who narrowly lost a closely watched race in 2019 for Queens district attorney, had a wide lead in the race for a council seat that includes the Astoria neighborhood.With Corey Johnson, the speaker, barred by term limits from running for re-election, the council will vote early next year to choose its speaker, in what will be a measure of progressives’ influence under the new mayor.Other New York racesProgressives scored victories in other, slightly less-high-profile elections across the state.Brad Lander, a member of the City Council whose campaign was endorsed by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Senator Bernie Sanders and other left-wing figures, earned the most first-place votes in the race for New York City comptroller.Mr. Johnson, the council speaker, whose efforts to find compromise on police reform last year left him at odds with many on the party’s left wing, is in second place. The results for that race also won’t be fully known until July 9 at the earliest.The Manhattan district attorney’s race is technically a statewide position, meaning the race did not use a ranked-choice system. Alvin Bragg — who ran on fighting mass incarceration and racism in policing — appears most likely to win outright, even though he held only a three-percentage-point lead over Tali Farhadian Weinstein, his main rival.In Buffalo, the state’s second-largest city, India Walton — a 38-year-old nurse and democratic socialist organizer — won the Democratic nomination for mayor, defeating a four-term incumbent with close ties to Gov. Andrew Cuomo.If she wins the general election, Ms. Walton would become the first self-described socialist to run a major city since 1960 (because, no, the tiny city of Burlington doesn’t count).On Politics is also available as a newsletter. Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox.Is there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More

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      In the N.Y.C. Mayoral Race, Some Votes Cost More Than Others

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      Raymond J. McGuire, the former Citigroup executive who mounted a long-shot and apparently unsuccessful Democratic bid for mayor, won 18,503 first-place primary votes. Early indications suggest he and his supporters paid dearly for each of them.Based on preliminary totals, Mr. McGuire’s votes cost his campaign and a so-called super PAC that supported him $910 apiece on average. The figure will probably fall as absentee votes are counted, but it is unclear by how much.Should all 207,500 of the absentee ballots that were sent to Democratic voters be returned, and should Mr. McGuire’s share of first-place votes on those ballots be the same as it was for those cast in person — 2.31 percent — the price-per-vote would drop to $723.Even without the super PAC spending, the preliminary data shows that Mr. McGuire’s votes still cost $568 apiece.A spokeswoman for Mr. McGuire’s campaign had no immediate comment.“I wouldn’t have changed anything that we did,” said Kimberly Peeler-Allen, who helped run the super PAC. “There were a lot of factors at play in this race and the majority of them we had no control over.”Mr. McGuire was not the only Democratic candidate whose robust spending yielded meager returns, according to the early data.Shaun Donovan, a former Obama administration housing secretary and budget director, claimed 17,303 first-place votes. His campaign and a super PAC that was financed mostly by his father combined to spend $630 per vote, the data shows.Even absent the super PAC, Mr. Donovan’s campaign still spent $236 a vote. (As with Mr. McGuire’s, the per-vote figures for Mr. Donovan are expected to change as absentee ballots are counted.)Scott M. Stringer, the city comptroller, also had the benefit of spending by a super PAC in addition to his campaign. Combined, the data shows, they spent $313 apiece for the 40,244 first-place votes he won.Not all of the candidates fared as poorly, on a price-per-vote basis.Supporters of Andrew Yang, who contributed to his campaign and to two super PACs that backed him, ended up spending about $130 apiece on his 93,291 first-place votes, according to the preliminary totals.Supporters of Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president and the race’s leader after first-choice votes were counted, spent about $62 apiece on his 253,234 first-place votes.Supporters of Maya Wiley, a former counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio, spent $45 on each of her 177,722 votes, through her campaign and two super PACs. Ms. Wiley placed second in first-choice votes.Kathryn Garcia, Mr. de Blasio’s former sanitation commissioner, was in third place after first-choice votes were counted. Her supporters spent $34 apiece, via her campaign and a super PAC, on the 155,812 votes that went to her.Dianne Morales, the major candidate in the field who ran furthest to the left and the only one without super PAC support, won more votes than either Mr. McGuire or Mr. Donovan and spent significantly less money: $55 on each of the 22,221 first-place votes she got.The votes of about 800,000 Democrats who voted in person had been tallied by Wednesday, but the count was not yet complete. New Yorkers requested a total of about 220,000 absentee ballots; as of Tuesday, more than 90,763 had been completed and returned. More

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      Maya Wiley Says She Won't Concede: 'I'm Winning.'

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      Sounding even more confident the morning after than she did on primary night, Maya Wiley declared Wednesday that she can pull off an upset victory over Eric Adams, the front-runner in the New York mayor’s race, despite his nearly 10-point lead.“We have every reason to believe we can win this race,” Ms. Wiley told campaign supporters and journalists in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn.She explained that she expects to significantly outpace Mr. Adams in collecting second- and third-choice votes, and she added: “We’re going to wait til every vote is counted, so every New Yorker counts.”As of Wednesday afternoon, with 83 percent of votes counted, Ms. Wiley, a civil-rights lawyer and former City Hall counsel, had 22 percent to Mr. Adams’s 32 percent. Kathryn Garcia, a former sanitation commissioner, was running third, with 20 percent. The rest is divided between Andrew Yang, who has already conceded, and nine other candidates.Ms. Wiley’s advisers said she would keep calling for patience and thoroughness, “over and over,” in the coming weeks to ensure that Mr. Adams, a retired police captain and Brooklyn’s borough president, does not try to claim victory before the end of the complex counting process.This is New York’s first citywide ballot using ranked-choice voting, which allows voters to choose up to five candidates in order of preference.If anything, Ms. Wiley’s advisers said, hopes are rising as vote counts and turnout data trickle in. They said her strategy has long relied on second-choice votes from a wide range of New Yorkers, but she has already won more first-place votes than they said they expected.More important, based on turnout and polling trends, they believe Ms. Wiley and Mr. Adams will be the last candidates standing, narrowly dividing the total vote.“I think we’re in a nail-biter,” Jon Paul Lupo, a senior adviser, said as Ms. Wiley hugged supporters on a busy sidewalk outside the Parkside subway station.That analysis explained Ms. Wiley’s answer when a reporter asked if, with 22 percent of votes in the first round, she was considering conceding.“No,” she said with an mildly outraged laugh. “Because I’m winning.” More

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      Eric Adams Leads in the Mayor’s Race. Here’s What to Know About Him.

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      Mr. Adams, a moderate Democrat whose campaign focused on crime and public safety, has a long history in New York politics and has faced scrutiny over his ethics.Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, had a solid advantage on Wednesday in the Democratic primary for New York mayor, leading his closest competitors, Maya Wiley and Kathryn Garcia, by a sizable margin.Mr. Adams’s lead is not decisive, and the returns so far only factor in first-choice votes cast under the city’s new ranked-choice voting system. It will be some time before an official winner is declared, both because absentee ballots are still outstanding and voters’ subsequent rankings will come into play. Ms. Wiley and Ms. Garcia still have paths to victory.But many New Yorkers are looking to learn more about Mr. Adams, the candidate who currently seems best positioned to win the primary.Mr. Adams himself was already looking to City Hall as he spoke to supporters on election night. “Tonight we took a huge step forward,” he said on Tuesday, before outlining his vision of the city in a speech that was at turns buoyant and defiant.A campaign focused on crime and public safetyDuring the campaign, Mr. Adams carved out a lane as one of the more moderate candidates in the Democratic primary race. He did so in large part by drawing a contrast between his views on policing and crime, and those of left-leaning rivals like Ms. Wiley and Dianne Morales.As public safety became a major issue in the race, following a rise in violent crime in the city, Mr. Adams tried to strike a tricky balance.He trumpeted his credentials as a former police officer and said they gave him the experience needed to address a rise in violent crime, but he also billed himself as a reformer who had taken on police misconduct.“I don’t hate police departments — I hate abusive policing, and that’s what people mix up,” Mr. Adams told The New York Times. In his campaign’s closing weeks, he seemed to bet that voters would understand that distinction.But Mr. Adams, who grew up in Queens, also stressed his working-class background, calling himself a blue-collar candidate who would fight for New Yorkers struggling to make ends meet in an expensive city that had left them behind.He also counted on his ability to court working-class and older minority voters outside Manhattan. The early returns suggest those groups supported him at the polls.Mr. Adams held a news conference over the weekend at the site of a shooting in the Bronx. He has said his experience as a former police officer would help him address rising crime.Desiree Rios for The New York TimesA rise through the ranksMr. Adams spent more than 20 years as a New York City police officer before entering politics. He has said that he was motivated in part to join the force after he was beaten by the police at age 15. Mr. Adams believed that he could change the culture of policing from within.During his time in the department, Mr. Adams was a strong advocate for Black officers. Through his involvement in Black police fraternal organizations — the Grand Council of Guardians and 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care, a group that he co-founded — Mr. Adams questioned his superiors publicly, speaking out against discrimination, police brutality and the department’s excessive use of stop-and-frisk tactics.The latter issue, in particular, illustrated the precarious tightrope that Mr. Adams walked during the campaign: Though he once fought the stop-and-frisk policing strategy, which was used disproportionately in New York against Black and Latino men and is reviled by the left, he has also supported its limited use.Some who knew Mr. Adams during his time as a police officer thought even then that his challenges to Police Department leadership were meant to position him for public office. As early as 1994, he had determined he wanted to be mayor, he told The New York Times.In 2006, Mr. Adams retired from policing to run for the State Senate. He won and represented parts of central Brooklyn in Albany until 2013, when he became the first Black person elected Brooklyn’s borough president.Over the years, he cultivated relationships with union leaders and other elected officials, many of whom endorsed his mayoral bid. He also built ties to wealthy donors, who boosted his campaign war chest, and to the lobbyists and party machine that helped him get out the vote on Tuesday.A complex historyMr. Adams’s time in politics also left a track record and a paper trail that made him vulnerable to attacks from his rivals over issues of transparency and ethics.His relationships with lobbyists, donors and developers have come under scrutiny throughout his career, in some cases prompting investigations.Mr. Adams has never been formally accused of misconduct, but a review by The New York Times found that he at times pushed the boundaries of ethics and campaign-finance laws.As a state senator, he was accused of “exceedingly poor judgment” by an investigator who found that he and others had improper links to a company that was trying to become the purveyor of video slot machines at Aqueduct Racetrack. Mr. Adams was the chair of the Senate’s racing and gaming committee at the time.As borough president, he started a nonprofit group that took donations from developers who sought his support for projects or zoning changes, prompting a probe into whether he violated conflict of interest regulations.Mr. Adams said in a statement that he and his campaigns had never been charged “with a serious fund-raising violation, and no contribution has ever affected my decision-making as a public official.”He also accused those questioning his ethics of holding him to a higher standard because he is Black and from a lower-income background.Whether accusations about Mr. Adams’s conduct eroded support for him remains unclear, though ranked-choice voting results to come may offer a fuller picture.But questions about his honesty reached a kind of fever pitch in the final stretch of the campaign after Politico New York reported that Mr. Adams had used conflicting addresses in public records and that he was spending nights at Borough Hall.Other candidates began to question whether Mr. Adams really lived in a townhouse in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn that he has said is his primary residence.Andrew Yang, in particular, accused Mr. Adams of living in a co-op in Fort Lee, N.J., that he owns with his partner. A report from The City found that Mr. Adams did not disclose his ownership of that co-op when he ran for State Senate in 2005.Mr. Adams dismissed the controversy about his residency as a politically motivated effort to shake him from the front-runner status he comfortably occupied in the race’s closing weeks. More

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      Eric Adams Won Big Outside Manhattan in Mayoral Primary

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      Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, held a strong lead on Wednesday, the day after the Democratic primary for mayor of New York City — but the race was far from over.Mr. Adams gave a triumphant speech on Tuesday night and thanked a long list of supporters who were part of a coalition that included Black and Latino voters, unions and a broad swath of the city outside Manhattan.He had more than 31 percent of first-choice votes among the nearly 800,000 Democratic votes reported so far. In cities with ranked-choice elections, the candidate who is leading in the first round of voting usually prevails.The Most Detailed Map of New York City Mayoral Primary ResultsSee neighborhood-level election results from the first round of the mayoral race.But his closest competitors, Maya Wiley, a former counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio, and Kathryn Garcia, the city’s former sanitation commissioner, had their own corridors of support. Ms. Wiley performed well in some predominately Black neighborhoods in Brooklyn, and in Astoria and Long Island City in Queens. Ms. Garcia had strong support in Manhattan and parts of Brownstone Brooklyn.If Mr. Adams wins in the coming weeks after absentee ballots and ranked choices are tabulated, his victory could challenge the momentum of the progressive movement in New York City and reinforce the notion that public safety has become the top issue for voters.“Adams used his approach on policing of saying we need justice and safety simultaneously to fuse together that traditional coalition,” said Bruce Gyory, a veteran Democratic strategist.Ms. Wiley told her supporters on Tuesday night that the race was not over.“Fifty percent of the votes are about to be recalculated,” she said to cheers.Indeed, many voters ranked Ms. Wiley and Ms. Garcia in the first two spots on their ballots, and it is possible that one of them could capture many of the other’s supporters. They are both vying to be the city’s first female mayor, and that was a central message of their campaigns.Mr. Adams ran as a working-class underdog and focused on communities that were hit hard by the pandemic — a message he touched on during his election night speech, said Christina Greer, an associate professor of political science at Fordham University.“There are so many communities feeling left out and Adams, as his authentic self, seemed just as angry and hurt and inspired as those communities,” Ms. Greer said. More

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      What We Learned from the NYC Mayoral Primary Election

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      A campaign that began behind the pandemic-imposed safety measure of Zoom screens ended on Tuesday in a five-borough, bare-knuckled brawl as Eric Adams, a former police captain, took a sizable lead over a splintered field of Democrats in the primary race to become New York City’s next mayor.Maya Wiley, a former civil rights attorney and past adviser to Mayor Bill de Blasio, was narrowly in second, followed closely by Kathryn Garcia, a former city sanitation commissioner. Neither had conceded in a spirited race whose outcome will shape how the city emerges from the pandemic.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.Kathryn Garcia had formed a last-minute alliance with Andrew Yang and he had urged his voters to rank her second.Michelle V. Agins/The New York TimesIn 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 endorsement 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.Though Andrew Yang was an early leader in the race, according to some polls, he soon faded and lagged to a fourth-place finish. Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York TimesThe 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.Maya Wiley’s performance underscored the struggle by progressives to form a winning coalition. Hilary Swift for The New York TimesAt 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 coveted endorsement of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and also 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.But Mr. Adams’s dismissive remarks about the power of social media on Tuesday — “Social media does not pick a candidate,” he said, “people on Social Security pick a candidate” — seemed to be aimed in almost equal measure at Mr. Yang, who is a social media phenomenon, as well as the left flank of the Democratic Party that rallied around Ms. Wiley.5. Progressives hold hope elsewhere even if Adams wins.Tali Farhadian Weinstein addressing supporters at her primary night celebration in Midtown Manhattan.Sarah Blesener for The New York TimesAlvin Bragg speaking alongside his family at his primary night celebration in Harlem.Dave Sanders for The New York TimesWhile 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. More

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      Primary Day in N.Y.C.: Where the Races Stand

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      [Want to get New York Today by email? Here’s the sign-up.]It’s Wednesday. Weather: Sunny and dry, with a high in the mid-70s. Alternate-side parking: In effect until July 4 (Independence Day). Desiree Rios for The New York TimesEven as gloomy weather descended on New York, hundreds of thousands of voters cast their ballots on Primary Day.The election offered the first major test of a new voting system and capped off months of campaigning in several city races. But winners will not immediately be called in many major contests, including the Democratic primary for mayor and the city comptroller race, with no single candidate getting more than 50 percent of the vote and ranked-choice selections yet to be processed.Here’s a look at where the races stand (and you can follow all the results here):Eric Adams is ahead. But results are far from final.In initial tallies after Tuesday’s voting, Mr. Adams was in front among the Democratic candidates for mayor with nearly 32 percent of first-choice votes. He was trailed by Maya Wiley, with about 22 percent, and Kathryn Garcia, with more than 19 percent.The three remained firmly optimistic on Tuesday night. But Andrew Yang, who was in fourth place at less than 12 percent, conceded. “We still believe we can help, but not as mayor and first lady,” he said with his wife, Evelyn, at his side.As ranked-choice votes are tabulated, those standings could change, and absentee ballots also must be counted. It may be weeks before an official winner is named.The eventual victor will face off in the Nov. 2 general election against Curtis Sliwa, the founder of the Guardian Angels, who handily won the Republican primary over Fernando Mateo.[Read about the major takeaways from Primary Day, and check out neighborhood-level results.]Alvin Bragg leads the Democratic race for Manhattan district attorney.Mr. Bragg, a former federal prosecutor and deputy attorney general, was ahead in the Democratic primary for Manhattan district attorney, leading Tali Farhadian Weinstein by about three and a half percentage points. His platform was focused on police accountability and racial justice.If his lead holds, Mr. Bragg would become the first Black person to lead the office. If Ms. Farhadian Weinstein pulled ahead, she would become the first woman.The Manhattan district attorney’s race, which did not use the ranked-choice system, included eight candidates total.[Looking for more information on the race? Here’s our full story.]Other races were headed to ranked-choice tabulation.In the contest for comptroller, a position that will play a significant role in the city’s economic recovery, Brad Lander, who was endorsed by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, was ahead in first-choice votes. He was leading Corey Johnson, the City Council speaker, by about nine percentage points.The winners of many City Council races were also still undeclared. Several incumbents coasted to easy victories, but in most districts the current officeholder was not running, guaranteeing at least 32 different faces.From The TimesUnanimous Vote Is Final Step Toward Removing Roosevelt StatueConnecticut Legalizes Recreational Marijuana, With Sales Set for May 2022With Mass Vaccination Sites Winding Down, It’s All About the ‘Ground Game’Morgan Stanley says no vaccine, no entry.Sylvia Deutsch, a Force in New York City Land Use, Dies at 96Want more news? Check out our full coverage.The Mini Crossword: Here is today’s puzzle.What we’re readingSeveral mayoral candidates showed support for renaming streets named for slaveholders. What would the effort take to accomplish? [Curbed]Lagging vaccination rates among workers at group homes for disabled New Yorkers are sparking concerns. [Gothamist]At the Newkirk Plaza subway station in Brooklyn, residents say, officials have not addressed a growing rat infestation problem. [The City]And finally: Who got Special Tony Awards?The Times’s Julia Jacobs writes:The Tony Awards, long delayed by the pandemic, announced on Tuesday the first recipients, including the Broadway Advocacy Coalition, an organization started five years ago by a group of actors and others as a tool to work toward dismantling racism through theater and storytelling.The other recipients were “David Byrne’s American Utopia,” an intricately choreographed concert by the former Talking Heads singer, and “Freestyle Love Supreme,” a mostly improvised hip-hop musical that was created, in part, by Lin-Manuel Miranda.These honors, called Special Tony Awards, were presented to three recipients that the Tony administration committee thought deserving of recognition even though they did not fall into any of the competition categories, according to a news release.The recipients were announced more than one year after the ceremony had originally been scheduled to take place. Because of the coronavirus pandemic, the ceremony was put on hold.The awards show — a starry broadcast that will celebrate Broadway’s comeback — is now scheduled to air on CBS in September, when Broadway shows are scheduled to return to theaters in almost full force. Most of the awards, however, will be given out just beforehand, during a ceremony that will be shown only on Paramount+, the ViacomCBS subscription streaming service.It’s Wednesday — show your appreciation.Metropolitan Diary: Familiar sightDear Diary:I was on an uptown No. 1 train. Across the aisle was a young man who looked to be in his early 20s. He had long, thick, curly red hair. There was a guitar case on the floor next to him.We looked at each other and smiled. I got off at the next stop.Around two months later, I got on another uptown 1. I sat down, looked up and saw the young red-haired man with his guitar case across the aisle and two seats away.We looked at each other. His eyes widened in surprise and his face broke into a grin.I’m sure I looked surprised, too, and I grinned, too.In two stops, he got off the train. We were both smiling.— Deametrice EysterNew York Today is published weekdays around 6 a.m. Sign up here to get it by email. You can also find it at nytoday.com. More

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      Fluid NYC Mayoral Race Heads to a Close as Voters Cast Ballots

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      .s-carousel{margin:0;padding:0;max-width:600px;margin:auto}.s-carousel__slides{position:relative;padding-top:min(600px,100%);background:#000}.s-carousel img,.s-carousel video{margin:0;padding:0;width:100%;height:100%;object-fit:contain}.s-carousel figure{margin:0;padding:0;position:relative}.s-carousel__credit{z-index:10;position:absolute;bottom:15px;left:15px;text-align:left;font-family:nyt-franklin,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-weight:500;font-size:.75rem;color:#fff;opacity:.6}.s-carousel figcaption{z-index:10;top:15px;left:15px;width:75%;letter-spacing:.01em;position:absolute;text-align:left;font-family:nyt-franklin,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-weight:700;text-shadow:0 0 10px rgba(0,0,0,.25),1px 1px 1px rgba(0,0,0,.35),-1px -1px 1px rgba(0,0,0,.35);font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#fff}.s-carousel li,.s-carousel ol{list-style:none;margin:0;padding:0}.s-carousel__viewport{width:100%;position:absolute;top:0;left:0;bottom:0;display:flex;overflow-x:scroll;overflow-y:hidden;scroll-behavior:smooth;scroll-snap-type:x mandatory}@media (prefers-reduced-motion){.s-carousel__viewport{scroll-behavior:auto}}.s-carousel__viewport{-ms-overflow-style:none;scrollbar-width:none;scrollbar-color:transparent transparent;-webkit-user-select:none;user-select:none}.s-carousel__viewport::-webkit-scrollbar{width:0;display:none}.s-carousel__viewport::-webkit-scrollbar-track{background:0 0}.s-carousel__viewport::-webkit-scrollbar-thumb{background:0 0;border:none}.s-carousel figure:focus,.s-carousel image:focus,.s-carousel video:focus{outline:0;box-shadow:none}.s-carousel__slide{width:100%;height:100%;position:relative;flex:0 0 100%;scroll-snap-align:start}.s-carousel__slide figure{width:100%;height:100%;display:flex;align-items:center}.s-carousel__tap-to-unmute-overlay{height:100%;width:100%;position:absolute;z-index:100;animation:fade-in .5s ease-out forwards;background-color:transparent;border:none}.s-carousel__tap-to-unmute-icon{pointer-events:none;background-color:#00000099;padding:10px;border-radius:50%;position:absolute;top:15px;right:15px}.s-carousel__tap-to-unmute-icon svg{display:block;fill:#fff;width:20px;height:20px}.s-carousel__tap-to-unmute-icon svg path{stroke:#fff}.s-carousel__kebob{display:flex;justify-content:center;margin-top:15px}.s-carousel__bob{display:inline-block;width:6px;height:6px;background:#121212;opacity:.3;background-clip:content-box;border:3px solid transparent;border-radius:50%;font-size:0;transition:transform .4s}.s-carousel__bob[data-active=true]{opacity:.8}.s-carousel__navigation{margin-top:15px;display:flex;justify-content:space-between;align-items:center}.s-carousel__arrows{width:50px;display:flex;justify-content:space-between;align-items:center}@media (hover:none){.s-carousel__arrows{visibility:hidden}}.s-carousel__arrow{all:unset;cursor:pointer}.s-carousel__arrow svg{pointer-events:none;fill:#333;transition:fill .15s}.s-carousel__arrow:hover svg{fill:#ccc}.s-carousel__closed-captions-container{position:absolute;z-index:11;bottom:35px;margin:0 auto;left:0;right:0;text-align:center}.s-carousel__closed-captions{font-size:1rem;color:#fff;background-color:rgba(0,0,0,.9);padding:5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;visibility:hidden}@media (max-width:600px){.s-carousel figcaption{width:75%;letter-spacing:.01em}.s-carousel__closed-captions{font-size:.8125rem}}Maya Wiley in HarlemHilary Swift for The New York TimesAndrew Yang on the Upper West SideGabriela Bhaskar/The New York TimesEric Adams in Crown HeightsJames Estrin/The New York TimesKathryn Garcia in Co-Op CityMichelle V. Agins/The New York TimesScott Stringer on the Upper East SideAndrew Seng for The New York Timesslide 1slide 2slide 3slide 4slide 5 As far as the eye could see, New York City was covered with Democratic candidates for mayor on Tuesday. Maya Wiley rode on the back of a scooter through Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Andrew Yang interrupted a brunch on the Upper West Side. Eric Adams, by turns triumphant and tearful, basked in the sound of supporters chanting his name after he voted in Bedford-Stuyvesant.From the Bronx to Staten Island, voters also turned out, heading to the polls to choose the Democrat who will almost certainly become the next mayor of the nation’s biggest city as it charts a still-tentative course toward recovery from the coronavirus pandemic.The fractious primary, with more than a dozen candidates, has been filled with unknowns and is in some ways unprecedented. It is New York’s first citywide experience with ranked-choice voting, in which voters can choose up to five candidates in many of the races on this year’s ballot. Under the system, the candidate with the most first-place votes after the initial count might not be the ultimate winner, and the final results may not be known for weeks. The devastation wrought by the pandemic, which claimed the lives of more than 30,000 city residents and wiped out over a million jobs, has raised the importance of the race, even as the scope of the losses sometimes made it hard for candidates to get the electorate’s attention.Voters casting their ballots at a community center in Bushwick, Brooklyn.Sarah Blesener for The New York TimesOn Tuesday, at least, they had it.“You have to win,” a voter in the Bronx told Kathryn Garcia. “I’m working on it,” she replied. Cindy Schreibman, a Manhattan voter who said she had ranked Mr. Adams first and Ms. Garcia second, spelled out the stakes.“This city’s on the precipice — it could go down, it could go up, it could stay the same,” Ms. Schreibman, 64, said. “What I’m very, very passionate about is as a lifelong New Yorker, making sure that this city is safe, clean, and fair.”The race remained fluid. Mr. Adams, the Brooklyn borough president and a retired police captain whose emphasis on public safety during a spring marked by a spike in gun violence seemed to gain traction, has led narrowly in recent polls. But Mr. Yang, the exuberant former presidential candidate; Ms. Wiley, a former City Hall counsel and MSNBC legal analyst; and Ms. Garcia, a no-nonsense former sanitation commissioner, all have a shot. A city that boasts of its diversity seems likely to have its first Asian, first female or second Black mayor.New Yorkers were also voting in primaries for Manhattan district attorney, one of the most influential elected law-enforcement posts in the nation; comptroller and public advocate, two citywide offices that often function as government watchdogs; and City Council and borough president. Registered Democrats make up two thirds of the city’s 5.6 million voters, and with no broadly popular Republican candidate, the victor in the Democratic mayoral primary is all but certain to succeed Mayor Bill de Blasio, a two-term Democrat being forced to leave office by term limits.Turnout seemed relatively light early in the day, with some polling places nearly empty and few snaking lines. That, too, might have had something to do with another new wrinkle: early voting for the first time in a mayoral primary. Almost 200,000 voters cast ballots in person before Tuesday. Another 220,000 requested absentee ballots. An alliance between Mr. Yang and Ms. Garcia in the campaign’s closing days — he urged his supporters to rank her No. 2 on their ballots, and the two campaigned side by side — provided some last-minute drama. Mr. Adams and some of his allies suggested that the two had teamed up to prevent a Black or Latino candidate from becoming mayor (Mr. Adams is Black; Ms. Garcia, despite her surname, is white). Several of Mr. Adams’s opponents denounced the criticism as unfounded and cynical.On Tuesday, a calm seemed to have settled over the race. “We need to turn the page from the politics of attack and division,” Mr. Yang said at a morning appearance in the Bronx. Mr. Adams, likewise, dismissed what he called efforts “to create a crisis on the day of the election” at a campaign stop in Midtown Manhattan.Katie Glueck, Alexandra E. Petri and Sean Piccoli contributed reporting. More