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    Map: NYC Mayoral Primary Election Results

    New York City voters cast their ballots for mayor on Tuesday, and it became clear that the competitive Democratic race would be decided by the city’s new ranked-choice system. It is likely to be weeks before a winner is known. The map below shows the latest unofficial results for the first round of votes, which […] More

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    A Bill Destined to Fail May Now Spawn More Plausible Options

    The For the People Act had little chance of testing the limits of what if anything is still possible in Washington. Oddly, it was so far from passage that it may provide some hope, because so many avenues remain to be pursued.The demise of the For the People Act — the far-reaching voting rights bill that Republicans blocked in the Senate on Tuesday — will come as a crushing blow to progressives and reformers, who have portrayed the law as an essential tool for saving democracy.But it was a flawed bill that had little chance of testing the limits of what if anything is still possible in Washington. Voting rights activists and Democratic lawmakers may even find that the collapse of this law opens up more plausible, if still highly unlikely, paths to reform.The law, known as H.R. 1 or S. 1, was full of hot-button measures — from public financing of elections to national mail voting — that were only tangentially related to safeguarding democracy, and all but ensured its failure in the Senate. Its supporters insisted the law should set the floor for voting rights; in truth, it set the floor at the ceiling, by guaranteeing a level of voting access that would be difficult to surpass.At the same time, reformers did not add provisions to tackle the most insidious and serious threat to democracy: election subversion, where partisan election officials might use their powers to overturn electoral outcomes.Instead, it focused on the serious but less urgent issues that animated reformers at the time the bill was first proposed in 2019: allegations of corruption in the Trump administration, the rise of so-called dark money in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United, or the spate of voter identification laws passed in the aftermath of President Barack Obama’s election victories.Even a cursory look at the effort by former President Donald J. Trump to subvert the 2020 election revealed a number of vulnerabilities in the electoral system, from the risk that a partisan election administrator might simply refuse to certify an unfavorable election result to the possibility that a vice president might choose not to count a certified electoral slate. None of those vulnerabilities were addressed.Those concerns have only escalated over the last several months as Republicans have advanced bills that not only imposed new limits on voting, but also afforded the G.O.P. greater control over election administration. The new powers include the ability to strip secretaries of state of some of their authority and remove members of local election boards. The New York Times reported over the weekend how some Democrats on local boards in Georgia, including people of color, were losing their positions.Senate Republicans used the filibuster on Tuesday to block debate on an ambitious Democratic bill aimed at countering a wave of ballot restrictions in G.O.P.-controlled states.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesIt’s true that the 2020 election and Mr. Trump’s unprecedented attempt to undermine it revealed the fragility of American democracy in different and more fundamental ways than even the most perspicacious legislator could have anticipated. Originally, the bill was seen as a “political statement,” a progressive “wish list” or a “messaging bill,” not as the basis for a realistic legislative effort.It was not designed to appeal to the moderate Senate Democrats, who progressives nonetheless hoped would eliminate the filibuster even as they insisted on different proposals and a bipartisan approach.Yet oddly, the bill was so far from passage that reformers still have cause for some semblance of hope. Nearly every stone was left unturned.As a result, many other avenues for reform remain to be pursued. None seem likely to be enacted in today’s political climate. All are more plausible than the bill that died in the Senate on Tuesday.One of those avenues emerged in the final days of the push for H.R. 1: a grand bargain, like the one recently suggested by Joe Manchin III, the moderate Democratic senator from West Virginia who provoked outrage among progressives when he said he would oppose the bill in its current form.Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, opposed the voting bill in its current form but proposed several compromises that gained favor with advocates. Sarahbeth Maney/The New York TimesThe Manchin compromise resembles H.R. 1 in crucial ways. It does not address election subversion any more than H.R. 1 does. And it still seeks sweeping changes to voting, ethics, campaign finance and redistricting law. But it offers Republicans a national voter identification requirement, while relenting on many of the provisions that provoke the most intense Republican opposition.Mr. Manchin’s proposal nonetheless provoked intense Republican opposition. Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri derided it as a “Stacey Abrams” bill. Mitch McConnell, the minority leader from Kentucky, appeared to suggest that no federal election law would earn his support.More generally, it is hard to imagine how Republicans could be enticed to accept stringent limits on gerrymandering, given the lopsided partisan consequences of such a ban.But the strategy behind the Manchin proposal could nonetheless serve as a basis for serious legislative efforts: Democrats can offer Republicans provisions they actually want on voting, like new photo identification requirements, and see what that buys them.The willingness of Ms. Abrams, who leads the Georgia-based voting rights group Fair Fight, to support the Manchin compromise, despite its embrace of voter ID measures — an archetypal voter suppression provision — suggests that there may be room to explore options that might attract support from Republicans and haven’t previously been 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a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}Another avenue is a version of the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, which would again subject Southern states to obtain federal clearance before making changes to their voting system — a requirement that a 2013 Supreme Court decision gutted.Restoring the preclearance condition is of considerable symbolic significance, but it offers far less to reformers than the Manchin compromise. It does nothing to address the laws that Republicans have enacted this year. It would do little to protect against election subversion. It does not check Republican efforts outside the South. And it relies on the federal court system, which has a more limited view of the Voting Rights Act than reformers would like.But unlike H.R. 1, restoring federal preclearance does have the support of Mr. Manchin and Lisa Murkowski, a Republican from Alaska. Mr. Manchin also seemed willing to embrace a variety of largely unspecified changes that might make preclearance somewhat more amenable to the Republicans, including an objective test to determine whether jurisdictions should be subjected to or relieved from preclearance and limits on the power of the attorney general. It remains doubtful that any changes would attract significant Republican support, but it also remains untested.A final avenue is an even narrower bill, comprising only provisions that attract bipartisan support. It remains to be seen whether even a single idea falls into this category. But many of the hypothesized proposals for addressing election subversion might have some chance to find Republican support, like reforms to the rules for counting electoral votes, and funding for election administration.Other potential areas of agreement are a requirement for paper ballots; ballot chain-of-custody requirements; standards for certification of federal elections and establishing voter eligibility; and clarifying whether and when judges or local officials can defy a state legislature.None of these proposals necessarily advantage either political party. All would have a chance to avoid the central, politicized debate over voter suppression and voting rights.Realistically, even the most innocuous proposals would have a challenging path to passage. The window for bipartisan cooperation on these issues may have closed several months ago, as memories of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters were supplanted by politically charged fights over voting rights and voter suppression. Republicans have few incentives to support a bill, even if watered down considerably.Yet all of these new avenues for reformers have something simple in common: They involve an earnest attempt to win 60 votes in the Senate, something that H.R. 1 did not. Many progressives scoff at the idea, but if moderate Democrats can be taken at their word, then reformers never had a choice but to at least try to find Republican support.Voting rights activists on Tuesday called for a new push to ensure voting rights, and Senator Chuck Schumer, the majority leader from New York, pledged to keep fighting, calling the Senate vote “the starting gun, not the finish line.”Perhaps reformers will surprise themselves and pull off a rare legislative win. More likely, their effort will fail and they can hope that their failure will demonstrate the impossibility of bipartisanship to Senate moderates, perhaps reopening the conversation about eliminating the filibuster.Wherever the effort might end, a more realistic legislative push begins with an earnest effort to write a bill that is more responsive to the current threats to the system and is designed to win enough votes to pass. More

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    Bragg Holds Lead in Manhattan District Attorney Primary

    Alvin Bragg, a former federal prosecutor, maintained a four-point lead over Tali Farhadian Weinstein. If elected, he would the first Black person to hold the office.Alvin Bragg was leading in the Democratic primary for Manhattan district attorney as returns came in Tuesday night, maintaining a steady margin of about four percentage points over Tali Farhadian Weinstein in a race likely to determine who heads the most prominent local prosecutor’s office in the country.The winner of the primary will be heavily favored to win the general election in November and would lead an office that prosecutes tens of thousands of cases a year and is running a high-profile inquiry into former President Donald J. Trump and his family business.Mr. Bragg and Ms. Farhadian Weinstein had long been seen as front-runners in the race, and they proved it on Primary Day, beating six other candidates by double-digit margins with nearly all of the in-person returns in on Tuesday night.A sizable number of absentee ballots — as many as 59,000, according to The Associated Press — had not yet been counted. As of midnight, Mr. Bragg’s lead stood at about 7,000 votes in the only major race on the ballot that did not make use of ranked-choice voting.The returns Tuesday showed Mr. Bragg performing particularly well on the Upper West Side and in his home neighborhood of Harlem, and he performed solidly throughout the borough with strong showings in every district. While many of his proposed policies and priorities align with those of progressive prosecutors who have remade district attorneys’ offices around the country in recent years, Mr. Bragg defied easy classification during the race, explaining the nuances of his positions by referring to his experiences growing up. If elected, he would be the first Black person to hold the office.“We are going to demand and deliver on both safety and fairness,” Mr. Bragg said in a speech at his election party in Harlem in which he acknowledged that there were votes still to be counted but declared victory and spoke as if he had already won. He pledged to help end racial disparities in the justice system​ and to run an office informed by his and his supporters’ life experiences.Ms. Farhadian Weinstein said in a statement that the race was far from over.“We all knew going into today that this race was not going to be decided tonight, and it has not been,” the statement said. “We have to be patient.”Ms. Farhadian Weinstein, who would be the first woman to hold the office, ran a more moderate campaign than most of the field, declining to join some other candidates in saying that she would not prosecute certain categories of crime under any circumstances. She raced ahead of the other contenders in fund-raising, bringing in at least $12.8 million, including $8.2 million she gave to her own campaign — causing her competitors and some observers to accuse her of trying to buy the race.Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who did not endorse a candidate, discouraged voters on Tuesday from backing Ms. Farhadian Weinstein.“Please do not support multimillionaires and billionaires who are just trying to buy elections and not supporting policies that will help us,” she said.Ms. Farhadian Weinstein’s focus on public safety separated her from most of the other candidates, whose strategies to make the criminal legal system less punitive may have made it difficult for voters to differentiate among them.The one exception was Liz Crotty, a veteran of the district attorney’s office who won the endorsement of several police unions and talked about the importance of public safety throughout the race.Three candidates without prosecutorial experience — Tahanie Aboushi, Eliza Orlins and Dan Quart — ran to the left of Ms. Farhadian Weinstein and Mr. Bragg, arguing that the office required fundamental change that no candidate with prosecutorial experience could deliver. That position ran counter to the messaging of Mr. Bragg, as well as a fellow former prosecutor, Lucy Lang, who also ran on the idea that she had the knowledge and experience to improve the office’s treatment of everyone it comes into contact with, including defendants.Ms. Aboushi, who was endorsed by Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, outperformed the other five candidates throughout the night, trailing only Mr. Bragg and Ms. Farhadian Weinstein.If Mr. Bragg ultimately wins the nomination, he will be overwhelmingly favored in the general election against the Republican nominee, Thomas Kenniff, who ran uncontested. Mr. Kenniff, a former state prosecutor in Westchester County, a member of the Army Judge Advocate General’s Corps and an Iraq War veteran, has said that the Manhattan district attorney should be focused on law and order, and in recent weeks, had begun to attack Ms. Farhadian Weinstein by name, calling her “soft on crime” and saying on Twitter that her platform “promises to be the last nail in NYC’s coffin.”Mr. Bragg and Ms. Farhadian Weinstein both have substantive legal pedigrees. Mr. Bragg graduated from Harvard Law School, clerked for a federal judge in New York and worked as a defense and civil rights lawyer. He first worked as a prosecutor in the state attorney general’s office, became a federal prosecutor in Manhattan and then returned to the attorney general’s office, where starting in 2013, he led a unit charged with investigating police killings of unarmed civilians. He eventually rose to become a chief deputy attorney general.Erin E. Murphy, a law professor at New York University who supports Mr. Bragg, said that the combination of the candidate’s policies and his racial identity was key to understanding how he might lead the office.“When we’re in this moment of racial reckoning, it’s really important the leader of the Manhattan D.A.’s office understands the real concerns about public safety that exist in our communities but also that they understand that the police themselves can be a harm-causing agent in the community,” she said.Ms. Farhadian Weinstein graduated from Yale Law School, clerked on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and the Supreme Court, served as counsel to the former United States attorney general, Eric H. Holder Jr., and after a stint as a federal prosecutor in Brooklyn was on the leadership team in the Brooklyn district attorney’s office.The district attorney’s office has had only two leaders in close to 50 years, and the current officeholder, Cyrus R. Vance Jr. has held his seat for more than a decade. He was considered one of the most progressive prosecutors in the United States when he was first elected in 2009. But since he took office, a wave of prosecutors have won elections by pledging to make their offices less punitive and less racist, a trend that has changed the way that such races are run.In the opening months of this year, it looked as if the Democratic primary for Manhattan district attorney would follow suit, with Ms. Aboushi, Ms. Orlins and Mr. Quart tipping the balance of the race toward the left. But as Ms. Farhadian Weinstein emerged as a financial powerhouse and gun violence rose in certain areas of the city, the focus of the race changed, and she and Mr. Bragg began to be seen as front-runners. More

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    N.Y. City Council Is Set for a Complete Overhaul in Primary Election

    As progressive groups hoped to push the Council to the left, early results showed two of their favored candidates had won and others appeared likely to be elected.When New York City’s mayor leaves office at the end of the year, more than half the members of the City Council will follow him out the door, leaving a city still finding its footing after the pandemic in the untested hands of a freshly elected mayor and a legislative body packed with newcomers.It was largely unclear which newcomers those would be when the polls closed on Tuesday: The outcome of many races in Tuesday’s primary was still unknown, though a number of incumbents seeking re-election coasted to an easy victory, with others poised to follow suit.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 impending overhaul after November’s general election, with all 51 seats on the ballot, and a new officeholder guaranteed in 32 of them.Left-wing activists and leaders have centered much of their energy in New York around Council races they saw as up for grabs. Despite a strong left-leaning base in New York City, residents have tended to be more centrist in their picks for mayor. Indeed, during this year’s mayoral primary, the more moderate candidates appeared to be leading in polls.At the same time, the Council has drifted to the left of Mayor Bill de Blasio over time. Progressives were hoping they can elect candidates who could be a countervailing force on the mayor and push a progressive platform.The Democratic Socialists of America, for example, mostly sat out the mayor’s race and focused the bulk of its resources on six City Council candidates.One of the group’s picks, Tiffany Cabán, who had suffered a narrow defeat in the 2019 primary for Queens district attorney, held a significant lead Tuesday night in the race for District 22 in Queens, though whether she would reach the 50 percent threshold required to avoid a ranked-choice voting tally was unclear.The Working Families Party endorsed more than two dozen candidates. Three of its choices — Carlina Rivera, a council member from the East Village; Marjorie Velazquez in the Bronx; and Jennifer Gutiérrez, who was the chief of staff for the council member in her district in Brooklyn and Queens — were projected by The Associated Press to win their races. (Ms. Cabán is also backed by the party.)The Council’s large turnover comes in large part from term limits that prevent members 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.One such candidate, Selvena Brooks-Powers, was the first candidate in the city to win a race after a ranked-choice count in a special election in February. On Tuesday night, she was projected to win her primary in District 31 in Queens with a decisive lead of thousands of votes.A number of former City Council members were looking to return to seats they had vacated. One of the best-known, Gale Brewer, the Manhattan borough president, appeared poised to take back the seat in District 6 on the Upper West Side that she held from 2002 to 2013. As of 1 a.m. on Wednesday., she had more than half the votes counted in the race.In Brooklyn, Darlene Mealy, who represented District 41 from 2006 to 2017, looked like she might take out the incumbent who replaced her, Alicka Ampry-Samuel. Ms. Ampry-Samuel, who was backed by both the United Federation of Teachers and the Working Families Party, was behind by about 2,000 votes.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, who took office in 2014 at the same time as Mr. de Blasio, said on Tuesday that the dynamic made the Council races worth watching closely.“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.”In addition to introducing and passing legislation, the City Council provides several checks on a mayor’s power. Council members are influential in the city’s land-use process, which affects development projects in their districts.The Council can also convene public hearings on contentious issues involving city agencies, and it votes on the city budget, which includes funding for the Police Department, a major focus of progressive activists.The stakes of the Democratic primaries are particularly high in the city. Only three Republicans serve on the Council, and the winners in nearly every district will be heavily favored to win the general election in November. More

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

    .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

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    Voters on Tuesday will participate in the city’s first mayoral election using ranked-choice voting, a system that may delay the declaration of a winner until mid-July.When the New York City mayoral primary campaign began, the city was steeped in grave uncertainty about its future. Candidates laid out radically different visions for how they would guide a still-shuttered metropolis out of overlapping crises around public health, the economy and racial injustice. More

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    When It Comes to Big City Elections, Republicans Are in the Wilderness

    The party’s growing irrelevance in urban and suburban areas comes at a considerable cost, sidelining conservatives in centers of innovation and economic might.When Jerry Sanders finished his second term as mayor of San Diego in 2012, he was the most prominent Republican city executive in the country. A former police chief close to the business community, Mr. Sanders appeared to be a political role model for other would-be Republican mayors, a moderate who worked with the Obama administration on urban policy and endorsed gay marriage at a pivotal moment. More