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    Yusef Salaam Is Declared Winner of Harlem City Council Primary Race

    Mr. Salaam was one of the Central Park Five who were wrongly convicted and then exonerated in the rape and assault of a jogger in Central Park in 1989.Yusef Salaam, one of five Black and Latino men whose convictions were overturned in the 1989 rape and assault of a female jogger in Central Park, cemented his victory in a highly contested City Council primary race in Harlem, according to The Associated Press on Wednesday.Mr. Salaam, 49, held a commanding lead on Election Day, with more than twice the number of votes over his closest rival, Inez Dickens, a state assemblywoman. The New York City Board of Elections began tabulating ranked-choice votes on Wednesday, and the new ranked-choice tabulation now shows Mr. Salaam with almost 64 percent of the vote to Ms. Dickens’s 36 percent.“This is a victory for justice, dignity and decency for the Harlem community we love,” Mr. Salaam said in a statement. “It’s a victory in support of not turning our backs on those in need, for saying we are our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers and for saying the only way for all of us to thrive is to believe in the promise we all have.”In addition to Ms. Dickens, Mr. Salaam defeated another sitting member of the Assembly, Al Taylor, who is serving his sixth year in the Legislature. Mr. Salaam is not expected to face a serious challenger, if any, in November.He will succeed Kristin Richardson Jordan, a democratic socialist who was one of the most far-left members of the City Council. She dropped out of the primary in May, but her name still remained on the ballot and she will serve out her term.All three candidates were moderates who sought to distance themselves from Ms. Jordan’s far-left views on issues such as policing. Mr. Salaam cast the election as an opportunity for a generational shift in Harlem, which was once the center of Black political power in New York City but had ceded that title to Brooklyn.During the race, Mr. Salaam spoke frequently about his conviction, exoneration and persecution by former President Donald J. Trump, who in 1989 took out full page ads in The New York Times and other papers calling for the death penalty in the Central Park jogger case. During debates or forums, Mr. Salaam often referenced his conviction and the nearly seven years he spent in prison.In a recent interview, Mr. Salaam said his victory restored his “faith in believing that what happened to me was for this very moment.”Issues in the district include a lack of affordable housing, the loss of Black residents and the saturation of drug treatment and social services facilities. One of the major issues during the election was the fate of a proposed affordable housing project on Lenox Avenue and West 145th Street.Ms. Jordan initially opposed the project and rejected it because it was not affordable enough for Harlem residents. The developer instead opened a truck depot on the site. Mr. Salaam said he supports the development of housing at the intersection and will work with area residents to make sure the project meets their needs.“The problem that we are experiencing in Harlem right now is that we are being pushed out,” Mr. Salaam said. “They’re saying that we’re leaving, but the truth of the matter is that we are being priced out and therefore we are being pushed out.”Mr. Salaam received a warm reception while walking around Harlem recently with passers-by who wanted to shake his hand and take selfies with him, including Janice Marshall, a consultant and lifelong Harlem resident, even though she said Mr. Salaam was not her first choice.“I’m happy because it’s justice for him and I’m happy for the new energy,” Ms. Marshall said. “I’ve heard of his story and I just wish him well.” More

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    New York Primary Election 2023: Live Results

    Source: Election results and race calls are from The Associated Press.Produced by Michael Andre, Neil Berg, Matthew Bloch, Irineo Cabreros, Andrew Chavez, Nate Cohn, Lindsey Rogers Cook, Annie Daniel, Saurabh Datar, Tiff Fehr, Andrew Fischer, Martín González Gómez, Will Houp, Aaron Krolik, Jasmine C. Lee, Ilana Marcus, Charlie Smart and Isaac White. Editing by Wilson Andrews, William P. Davis, Amy Hughes, Ben Koski and Allison McCartney. Reporting contributed by Dana Rubinstein. More

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    Harlem City Council Election Tests Limits of Progressive Politics

    Three moderate Democrats are running to replace Kristin Richardson Jordan, one of the city’s most left-leaning politicians, who is not seeking re-election.Two years ago, when a democratic socialist narrowly won a crowded Democratic primary for a City Council seat in Harlem, some saw it as a sign that the historically Black neighborhood was becoming more politically progressive.But roughly a month before this year’s primary on June 27, the first-term councilwoman, Kristin Richardson Jordan, unexpectedly dropped out of the race. Her decision has recast the hotly contested Democratic primary, which now comprises three candidates — none particularly progressive. Two are sitting State Assembly members: Al Taylor, 65, a reverend in his sixth year in the Legislature; and Inez Dickens, 73, who held the Harlem Council seat for 12 years before joining the Assembly. The third candidate is Yusef Salaam, 49, one of five men convicted and later exonerated in the rape and assault of a female jogger in Central Park in 1989.All are moderate Democrats who, before Ms. Jordan’s withdrawal, had tried to distance themselves from Ms. Jordan and her political stances, which include redistributing wealth and abolishing the police.But with the incumbent out of the race, the candidates have turned on each other. Mr. Salaam questioned Ms. Dickens’s behavior as a landlord, asking her during a debate how many people she had evicted in the last two decades. Ms. Dickens initially replied one, but The Daily News found that approximately 17 eviction proceedings had been initiated.Ms. Dickens said her family-owned management companies rent units below market rate, and that some of the tenants involved in eviction proceedings were in arrears for four years or more. “I have done more to preserve and protect affordable housing in Harlem than any other candidate in this race,” Ms. Dickens said.Her campaign, in turn, has questioned Mr. Salaam’s experience after his campaign appeared to be in deficit and over the $207,000 spending cap, before he filed amended paperwork.The race then took a bizarre turn this week at a women’s rally for Ms. Dickens when the former Representative Charles B. Rangel, in recounting how Mr. Salaam had called him before entering the race, remarked that Mr. Salaam had a “foreign name.” Mr. Salaam responded on social media that “we all belong in New York City.” Mr. Rangel, through a spokeswoman for Ms. Dickens, said he intended no offense and meant foreign as being unknown to him.The two men spoke on Friday afternoon and resolved the issue, representatives for both campaigns confirmed.Mr. Salaam, left, often seeks to tie his candidacy to his wrongful conviction in the Central Park rape case, drawing the frustration of Ms. Dickens, seated in the background.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesUltimately, the race might be decided on issues more germane to the district, including the loss of Black residents, a lack of affordable housing and concerns about an oversaturation of drug treatment centers. The three candidates hold stances that underscore how the district will soon be represented by a moderate. Ms. Dickens opposed the so-called good cause eviction measure, which would have limited a landlord’s ability to increase rents and evict tenants, had it passed the State Legislature. Mr. Taylor has in the past voted against abortion rights based on religious objections, but recently voted to support a measure that would let voters add an equal rights amendment to the State Constitution. Mr. Salaam supported congestion pricing, but said he still had reservations about how it would affect Harlem.All three have garnered endorsements from mainstream Democratic groups and leaders: Ms. Dickens from the United Federation of Teachers and Representative Adriano Espaillat; Mr. Taylor from the New York City District Council of Carpenters; and Mr. Salaam was recruited to run for the seat by Keith L.T. Wright, the former assemblyman and chair of the Manhattan Democratic Party.The Greater Harlem Coalition voted to endorse Ms. Dickens before Ms. Jordan dropped out of the race. The carpenters’ union said their sole objective was to defeat Ms. Jordan.Ms. Dickens, center, was endorsed by Mayor Eric Adams at a rally last week at the Harriet Tubman Memorial triangle in Manhattan.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesMr. Taylor said that not all of Ms. Jordan’s supporters necessarily supported her most left-leaning stances like defunding the police. “I don’t think that she had cornered the market on this community,” he said in an interview.Ms. Jordan’s victory in 2021 over the incumbent, Bill Perkins, was less a districtwide endorsement of far-left views, and more the culmination of “galvanized anti-establishment” sentiment that has been building against Harlem’s once powerful but now fading political machine, said Basil Smikle, director of the Public Policy Program at Hunter College.“There is an interest in finding an alternative and setting a new course,” Mr. Smikle said.Ms. Jordan, whose name will still be on the ballot, may have been her own worst enemy. She was criticized for using Council funds to promote her campaign. Her far-left stances on policing, housing development and the war in Ukraine drew backlash from colleagues and voters. She missed nearly half of her committee meetings, city records show.Syderia Asberry-Chresfield, a co-founder of the Greater Harlem Coalition, a group that organizes against the oversaturation of social services in the neighborhood, felt that Ms. Jordan was too far to the left.“We did understand that changes needed to be made,” Ms. Asberry-Chresfield said. “But some of her changes were so radical and she wasn’t willing to bend.”Ms. Jordan declined to comment. But Charles Barron, a left-leaning councilman who represents East New York and is one of Ms. Jordan’s few allies on the City Council, said her leftist positions irritated mainstream Democratic leadership and their financial backers who “prefer establishment-type elected officials as opposed to independent, strong, Black radicals like she was.”The remaining three candidates did not greatly differentiate themselves during a forum at the National Action Network in Harlem earlier this month and at a debate Tuesday night on NY1.They are all in favor of the development of housing at 145th Street and Lenox Avenue, a proposal that Ms. Jordan initially rejected because it was not affordable enough. The candidates said they were not in favor of the city’s use of stop-and-frisk tactics, which a federal monitor recently said was being utilized in a discriminatory manner.When it comes to the influx of migrants seeking asylum, Ms. Dickens, Mr. Taylor and Mr. Salaam said they support New York City’s status as a sanctuary city but questioned whether the billions of dollars being spent to house and feed migrants should also be available to New Yorkers experiencing homelessness.None want Ms. Jordan’s endorsement.Of the three, Mr. Salaam has gone most aggressively after Ms. Jordan’s likely supporters by using his conviction, exoneration and persecution by former President Donald J. Trump as the focus of his campaign. Speaking at a community center for older adults in East Harlem last week, Mr. Salaam drew the loudest applause when criticizing Mr. Trump, who in the 1989 bought full-page advertisements in four city newspapers, including The New York Times, to call for the death penalty to be reinstated because of the Central Park case.“Who better to be a participant in leading the people than one who has been close to the pain?” Mr. Salaam said.Mr. Salaam and Mr. Taylor sought to weaken Ms. Dickens’s chances by cross-endorsing one another on Tuesday. Voters can rank their choices in the three-way primary, and the men encouraged supporters to make the other their second choice. Two days later, Ms. Dickens responded by hosting the women’s rally where she said the two men in the race were plotting against her, and unveiling a more prestigious endorsement: Mayor Eric Adams.Mr. Taylor said that the Harlem district did not necessarily share the far-left views of Kristin Richardson Jordan, the incumbent who is not seeking re-election. Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesSpeaking at the Harriet Tubman Memorial in Harlem, the mayor highlighted Ms. Dickens’s moderate stances, saying that she understands the “balance between public safety and justice,” and that “it’s all right to have a city that’s friendly to businesses.”At the recent National Action Network forum there was not an issue, from affordable housing to whether he supported closing the Rikers Island jail complex, that Mr. Salaam did not link to his conviction or the nearly seven years he spent in prison — to the visible annoyance of Ms. Dickens, who has emphasized her experience.Mr. Salaam supports closing the Rikers Island jail complex and opening borough-based jails, while Ms. Dickens and Mr. Taylor have raised concerns about opening local jails.That still has not helped Mr. Salaam gain the support of local progressives. A political action committee associated with Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez endorsed Ms. Jordan when she first ran, but is unlikely to make a new endorsement. National progressive figures such as Cornel West, the professor and activist who recently announced a run for president, and Keith Ellison, Minnesota’s progressive attorney general, have endorsed Mr. Salaam. .“Donald Trump said he ought to have the death penalty,” Mr. Ellison said. “Who can talk about how the system needs to be better and more effective than Yusef Salaam?” More

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    Choose Wisely, Choose Often: Ranked-Choice Voting Returns to New York

    The new voting system was used in the mayor’s race in 2021. It is back this month for the primary races for the City Council.The last time New Yorkers went to the polls, they had to contemplate a governor’s race and a slew of congressional races in the critical 2022 midterm elections.But there was one variable that they did not have to deal with: ranked-choice voting, which had been used the previous year in the mayoral election.For the City Council races on the ballot this year, ranked-choice voting returns for the June 27 primaries, with early voting beginning Saturday, June 17.Here’s what you need to know about the voting system:Ranked-choice voting was used in the 2021 primaries in New York City.Desiree Rios for The New York TimesHow does ranked-choice voting work?The voting system, overwhelmingly approved by the city’s voters in 2019, is used in primary and special elections for mayor, public advocate, comptroller, borough president and the City Council.Under ranked-choice voting, voters can list up to five candidates on their ballots in order of preference.If a candidate receives more than 50 percent of first-choice votes in the first round, they win.If no candidate does, the winner is decided by a process of elimination: The lowest-polling candidate is removed from each round, and their votes are reallocated to whichever candidate those voters ranked next until only two candidates are left. The candidate with the most votes wins.That might sound complicated. But all you need to know as a voter is this: Rank your favorite candidate first and then pick as many as four other choices, in order of preference.How Does Ranked-Choice Voting Work in New York?New Yorkers first used the new voting system in the mayor’s race in 2021. Confused? We can help.Did the voting system help Eric Adams become mayor?Maybe.Mr. Adams had expressed doubts about ranked-choice voting, but it might have helped him win — even if the process was messy.Initially, early unofficial results showed Mr. Adams with a narrow lead. But then election officials announced they had miscounted the ballots. A new tabulation still found that Mr. Adams had collected the most first-round votes, but he was not declared the winner until weeks later, when voters’ secondary choices were tabulated.Under the old system, Mr. Adams would have faced a runoff because he did not receive at least 40 percent of votes. In a runoff, he would have faced his closest first-round rival in the 2021 Democratic primary: Maya Wiley, a lawyer and MSNBC contributor. Voters would have faced a clear choice between two candidates, and it is not clear who might have won.But after voters’ ranked choices were considered, Ms. Wiley was eliminated, and in the last round, only Mr. Adams and Kathryn Garcia, the city’s former sanitation commissioner, remained.Mr. Adams won the primary by a slim margin: only 7,197 votes. The ranked-choice system also aided Ms. Garcia; she was in third place after the initial count of first-place votes, but moved up to second as other candidates were eliminated, and their supporters’ votes were reallocated.Will ranked-choice be a factor in the Council primaries?Every member of the 51-member City Council is running to keep their seat, including candidates who won two years ago under unusual rules that were part of the City Charter.Less than half of races are being contested, and of those, 13 races feature more than two candidates — making ranked-choice voting necessary.The most interesting of those races is in Harlem, where the current council member, Kristin Richardson Jordan, a democratic socialist, recently bowed out of the race.Are there benefits to ranked-choice voting?Proponents say the system enables people to more fully express their preferences and to have a greater chance of not wasting their vote on a less popular candidate. Voters can leave a candidate they really don’t like off their ballot and make sure their vote helps one of their opponents.There is also evidence that ranked-choice voting encourages more candidates to run, especially women and people of color, and that it discourages negative campaigning, since candidates are no longer competing for a person’s only vote.Candidates sometimes cross endorse each other to boost like-minded allies. Some political experts believe that if Ms. Garcia and Ms. Wiley had cross-endorsed each other in the primary, one of them would have become New York City’s first female mayor.Ranked-choice voting is used in Maine and Alaska, and in dozens of cities including San Francisco and Minneapolis. Opponents believe that it confuses many voters, and may discourage some to vote.Will cross-endorsements be a factor this year?Yes.Just days before early voting started, two Democratic candidates in the competitive City Council race in Harlem endorsed each other: Yusef Salaam, an activist who was wrongly imprisoned in the Central Park rape case, and Al Taylor, a state assemblyman.The move appeared aimed at stopping Inez E. Dickens, a Democratic state assemblywoman who formerly held the Council seat. More

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    Cherelle Parker Wins Democratic Mayoral Primary in Philadelphia

    If she wins the general election in November, she will be the first woman to lead the city.After a crowded primary, Cherelle Parker, a former state representative and City Council member who campaigned on hiring more police, won the Democratic nomination for Philadelphia mayor on Tuesday night, emerging decisively from a field of contenders who had vied to be seen as the rescuer of a struggling and disheartened city.If she wins in November, which is all but assured in a city where Democrats outnumber Republicans more than seven to one, Ms. Parker will become the city’s 100th mayor, and the first woman to hold the job.Of the five mayoral hopefuls who led the polls in the final stretch, Ms. Parker, 50, was the only Black candidate, in a city that is over 40 percent Black. She drew support from prominent Democratic politicians and trade unions, and throughout the majority Black neighborhoods of north and west Philadelphia. Some compared her to Mayor Eric Adams of New York City, noting her willingness to buck the party’s progressives with pledges to hire hundreds of police officers and bring back what she has called constitutional stop-and-frisk.But she said that many of her proposed solutions had roots in Philadelphia’s “middle neighborhoods” — working and middle-class areas that have been struggling in recent years to hold off decline.“They know it’s not Cherelle engaging in what I call ‘I know what’s best for you people’ policymaking, but it’s come from the ground up,” Ms. Parker said on Tuesday morning at a polling place in her home base of northwest Philadelphia.Solutions should come from the community, she said, “not people thinking they’re coming in to save poor people, people who never walked in their shoes or lived in a neighborhood with high rates of violence and poverty. I’ve lived that.”Ms. Parker did not attend her own victory party on Tuesday. Her campaign told the Philadelphia Inquirer that she had emergency dental surgery last week, and issued a statement saying that she had required immediate medical attention at the University of Pennsylvania on Tuesday evening for a “recent dental issue.” Her Republican opponent in the November general election is David Oh, a former City Council member.If Ms. Parker wins in November, she would be taking the reins of a city facing a host of problems, chief among them a surge in gun violence that has left hundreds dead year after year. Philadelphians routinely described crime as the city’s No. 1 problem, but the list of issues runs long, including crumbling school facilities, blighted housing stock, an opioid epidemic and a municipal staffing shortage.The punishing list of challenges had exhausted the current mayor, Jim Kenney, a Democrat whose second term was consumed with Covid-19, citywide protests and a soaring murder rate, and who spoke openly of his eagerness to be done with the job.The primary to replace Mr. Kenney was congested from the start and remained so into its final days. Up to the last polls, no front-runner had emerged and five of the candidates seemed to have a roughly equal shot at winning, each representing different constituencies and different parts of town.The candidates at the finish line included Rebecca Rhynhart, a former city controller with a technocratic pitch who was endorsed by multiple past mayors; Helen Gym, a former councilwoman endorsed by Bernie Sanders and a range of other high-profile progressives; Alan Domb, who made millions in real estate and served two terms on the City Council; and Jeff Brown, a grocery store magnate and a newcomer to electoral politics.The early days of the race were dominated by TV ads supporting Mr. Brown and Mr. Domb, but other campaigns soon joined the fray and in the final weeks the ad war grew increasingly combative. SuperPACs spent millions on behalf of various candidates and eventually became an issue themselves, when the Philadelphia Board of Ethics accused Mr. Brown, who led in early polls of the race, of illegally coordinating with a SuperPAC.But for all the money and the negative campaigning, no candidate seemed to rise above the crowded field for Philadelphians who were busy with their daily lives.“People have option fatigue,” said State Representative Malcolm Kenyatta, a Democrat, who on Tuesday was chatting with candidates and local politicos as they packed into a traditional Election Day lunch at South restaurant and jazz club.In the last polls before the election, large numbers of voters remained undecided, but many of them seemed to break in the end for Ms. Parker, whose win was more substantial than many were expecting.The victory of a moderate like Ms. Parker in Philadelphia stood in contrast to some races elsewhere around the state. In Allegheny County, where Pittsburgh lies, progressives racked up one primary win after another on Tuesday, with candidates from the left flank of the Democratic Party winning the nominations for a range of top offices, including county executive and district attorney.Democrats also held onto their slim control of the Pennsylvania House on Tuesday, as Heather Boyd won a special election in southeast Delaware County. Top Democrats, including President Biden and Gov. Josh Shapiro, had made a push in the race, framing it as crucial to protecting reproductive rights in Pennsylvania.In a separate special election, Republicans held a safe state House seat in north-central Pennsylvania when Michael Stender, a school board member and a firefighter, won his race.Neil Vigdor More

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    G.O.P. Gains Strength on N.Y. City Council, as a Democrat Breaks Ranks

    Progressive Democrats and conservative Republicans are clashing on what may be the most ideologically diverse City Council ever.As a first-term Democrat on the New York City Council, it might seem logical that Ari Kagan would want to curry favor with his party, which has an overwhelming majority within the 51-member body. Instead, he did the politically unthinkable this month: He switched parties to join the Council’s five other Republicans.For Mr. Kagan, who represents a district in South Brooklyn that is becoming more conservative, the move might be to his political advantage when he seeks re-election next year — even if it means a loss of power and influence on the Council. But Mr. Kagan said that he believed that the Democratic Party, especially in New York, had drifted too far to the left.“It’s not me leaving the Democratic Party,” Mr. Kagan said. “The Democratic Party started to leave me.”Across New York City, where Democrats outnumber Republicans seven to one, there are signs of Republicans making inroads. In the most recent midterm elections, every county in the city voted more Republican than it did in the 2020 presidential election, and three Democratic members of the State Assembly lost to Republicans in South Brooklyn.Lee Zeldin, the Republican nominee for governor, won Staten Island by 19 points more than Republicans won the borough in the 2020 presidential election. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, won the governor’s race by the smallest margin in over 30 years — in part because of how well Mr. Zeldin did in parts of New York City. “Ten years ago, our party was somewhat on the decline. We were fractured, we were disjointed, we were losing voters,” Joseph Borelli, the Council’s Republican minority leader, said at the news conference announcing Mr. Kagan’s switch. “I think today is a sign that the opposite is happening.”Some on the far left have accused Mayor Eric Adams, a moderate Democrat who is a former registered Republican, of serving as an unspoken ally to Republicans. Mr. Adams regularly criticizes left-leaning Democrats, including members of the Council, as damaging to the party’s electoral hopes.The mayor also has a working relationship with Mr. Borelli. That became evident when Mr. Borelli’s Republican appointees to a City Council districting commission joined with Mr. Adams’s appointees in an unsuccessful bid to push through Council maps that would have benefited Republicans by keeping all three G.O.P. districts on Staten Island contained within the borough, while hurting some progressive Democrats in Brooklyn.The Council maps that were ultimately created as part of the once-in-a-decade redistricting process still increased the chance that newly drawn districts might be won by Republicans in next year’s election, according to an analysis by the CUNY Mapping Service.Still badly outnumbered, the Republican contingent on the Council will be hard-pressed to pass partisan legislation, but it can still create, if not shape, debate. Its members oppose vaccine mandates, filed a lawsuit to invalidate noncitizen voting, used the word “groomer” in opposition to drag queen story hour in public schools and are vocal proponents of more stringent policing tactics.The Aftermath of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6A moment of reflection. More

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    Adrienne Adams, 1st Black NYC Council Speaker, Says City Is at a Crossroads

    Ms. Adams, who became speaker on Wednesday, will lead the most diverse City Council ever as New York tries to recover from the pandemic. She already faces battles with the mayor.Adrienne Adams had to overcome several obstacles on her way to being voted in on Wednesday as the first Black woman to serve as speaker of the New York City Council, the second-most-powerful position in city government.She had a competitive race to retain her City Council seat representing southeast Queens, including a primary challenge from her predecessor, and entered the contest for speaker relatively late. Mayor Eric Adams did what he had said he would not do and tried, unsuccessfully, to tip the scales in favor of one of Ms. Adams’s rivals.Ms. Adams, 61, a moderate Democrat, prevailed and will now lead the City Council, as New York grapples once again with being a center of the coronavirus pandemic while facing a difficult financial future.The new City Council, which is more diverse than ever and has its first-ever female majority, also looks to be more ideologically divided than in recent memory. And in spite of public efforts to show they are on the same page, Ms. Adams already faces potential battles with the mayor on everything from the use of solitary confinement in the city’s jails to new legislation that would grant more than 800,000 legal residents who are not citizens the right to vote in municipal elections.Ms. Adams, who lost her father to Covid, said her priority would be seeing the city through the pandemic and working to strengthen families that have been damaged in its wake.“We meet here today as the most diverse Council in history, led by the first African-American speaker,” Ms. Adams said in a speech Wednesday after her colleagues voted nearly unanimously to make her speaker. “While this is a moment to celebrate this milestone, we must realize that we are here because New York is at the crossroads of multiple crises — each one competing for our full attention.”Ms. Adams, the first Black person to serve as speaker, will lead a historically diverse City Council.Dave Sanders for The New York TimesIn an interview, Ms. Adams noted that the pandemic had further exposed existing inequalities on issues ranging from medical care to child care, housing and access to high speed internet. “All roads lead through this pandemic,” she said. “When I think of my priorities, I think of rebuilding a city.”Ms. Adams’s predecessor as speaker, Corey Johnson, said it would not be easy.“We’re in this painful and uncertain time with Omicron and not knowing what this will do to our economy,” Mr. Johnson said in an interview. “This new Council has more members who are very far left and more who are far right. To get things done will be a challenge.”He added: “But it’s not an impossible challenge because Adrienne has the skill set, track record and temperament.”Yvette Buckner, a political strategist who is vice chair of 21 in ’21, a group that helped elect a record number of women to the City Council, said Ms. Adams would “be able to understand the needs of the city from a different lens,” partly because of her experience as a mother of four and a grandmother of 10.Even as the country goes through “a long overdue reckoning of racial justice,” New Yorkers need to feel safe from discriminatory policing, “safe from the virus and safe from violence,” Ms. Adams said in her speech.Mr. Adams will be her counterpart in that effort. Though he suffered a significant political loss when Ms. Adams amassed enough support to become speaker, they both say they have a good relationship.Ms. Adams and Mr. Adams were classmates at Bayside High School in Queens in the late 1970s. Mr. Adams, discouraged by an undetected learning disability, has spoken often about not being a model student. Ms. Adams, on the other hand, was a cheerleader who founded a gospel chorus at the high school, which was mostly white at the time.“I actually went to class. We knew of each other but we did not hang out in the same crowd,” Ms. Adams said of her time at high school with the mayor. “But we are so proud of each other.”After graduating from Spelman College, Ms. Adams worked as a corporate trainer for communications companies. She served as chairwoman of Community Board 12 in Queens before running for office in 2017 after her predecessor was convicted of fraud and removed from office. (His conviction was later reversed.)As a councilwoman, she passed legislation to limit the sale of tax liens and established a task force to make sure the liens were implemented fairly, and she helped allocate $10 million in the budget to create a Black studies curriculum for public schools.Many in the city’s political class were surprised when Mr. Adams and his team tried to install Francisco Moya, a councilman from Queens, as speaker, particularly because Mr. Adams and Ms. Adams were largely seen as being politically in sync.Ms. Adams faces potential battles with Mayor Eric Adams on the use of solitary confinement in the city’s jails and legislation that would grant noncitizen legal residents the right to vote in municipal elections. Anna Watts for The New York TimesMs. Adams, who was a co-chair of the Council’s Black, Latino and Asian Caucus, opposed deeply cutting the Police Department budget as part of the defund the police movement. Mr. Adams is a former police captain who has criticized efforts to cut the police budget and who won the Democratic primary on a message of improving public safety.“How am I going to dislike someone that shares my same last name?” Mr. Adams said at a news conference on Tuesday. “I love Adrienne.”The mayor credited Ms. Adams, who endorsed him in the Democratic primary, with playing a “pivotal role” in helping him win.Ms. Adams also strongly agrees with Mr. Adams that the city, and its schools, should not shut down because of the highly contagious Omicron variant.But there are already two potential points of conflict. Mr. Adams has raised concerns about a bill passed during the previous City Council session that would give legal residents the right to vote in municipal elections, saying he believes that the 30-day residency requirement is too short. He has not ruled out vetoing the legislation.Incoming N.Y.C. Mayor Eric Adams’s New AdministrationCard 1 of 7Schools Chancellor: David Banks. More