Elections, Mayors

Subterms

    More stories

    • 100 Shares179 Views

      in Elections

      The Winner of the Democratic Primary for Mayor

      by

      [Want to get New York Today by email? Here’s the sign-up.]It’s Wednesday. Weather: A heat advisory is in effect until tonight. Mostly sunny, with a high in the mid-90s. Scattered storms this evening. Alternate-side parking: In effect until July 19 (Eid al-Adha). James Estrin/The New York TimesIt’s been two weeks of partial updates and countless caveats. But finally, we have a result.Eric Adams has won the Democratic nomination for mayor of New York City, according to a call of the contest by The Associated Press on Tuesday. The former police captain edged out his closest rival, Kathryn Garcia, by a single percentage point after elections officials tallied absentee ballots and ran through the ranked-choice elimination rounds.He will be the overwhelming favorite in the November general election against Curtis Sliwa, the Republican nominee, given New York’s political makeup. He would become the second Black mayor in the city’s history.[Read more about the results and Mr. Adams’s base of support.]Here’s what to know:The resultsAfter Primary Day, as in-person, first-choice votes were tallied, Mr. Adams led the crowded field, with a roughly 10-point margin over the second-place candidate. But as ranked-choice selections were tabulated, Ms. Garcia and Maya Wiley moved into a tight three-way heat.But after more than 100,000 absentee ballots were tallied, Ms. Garcia could not fully close the gap: She trailed by about 8,400 votes in an unofficial final-round matchup. Ms. Wiley finished in third place. The two were vying to become the city’s first female mayor.Of the nearly 938,000 ballots counted overall, about 15 percent ranked neither Mr. Adams or Ms. Garcia. If a greater portion of them had ranked either candidate, the outcome of the race might have changed.The reactionNeither Ms. Garcia nor Ms. Wiley has conceded, and their campaign statements noted that the results had not yet been made official. It was not immediately clear whether either would bring legal challenges against the results, given the small margin. (All three leading candidates had filed to maintain the option to do so.)If they do not, the results could be certified next week.The remaining ballotsThe tabulations on Tuesday included most but not all of the absentee ballots.There are potentially several thousand votes still to be counted, which may include affidavit votes, as well as defective absentee ballots that voters can fix within the next week. The Adams campaign told my colleague Dana Rubinstein that there are maybe 3,000 votes left to count, which would make it mathematically impossible for Ms. Garcia to win.From The TimesCuomo Declares a Gun Violence Emergency in New York StateAs Delta Risk Looms, New York City Scales Back Covid MonitoringMan Charged With Hate Crimes After Racist Tirade Is Caught on VideoNew York’s Fiscal Watchdog Sues to End Mayor’s Pandemic Spending PowersHot Vax Summer? Falstaff and Shakespeare in the Park Are Ready.Want more news? Check out our full coverage.The Mini Crossword: Here is today’s puzzle.What we’re readingThe city’s three public library systems will return to nearly full service this month, reopening at their prepandemic schedules. [Gothamist]More than 10,000 subway trips were canceled last month because of a shortage of train crew members, the most in a month since the earliest stages of the pandemic. [The City]A second Shake Shack employee has sued the Police Department over an incident last June in which officials made unfounded claims that fast-food workers intentionally poisoned officers [Daily News]And finally: Once again, life is a cabaretElysa Gardner writes:“Thank you all for risking your lives by coming out tonight,” Joe Iconis quipped, welcoming a socially distanced crowd to the June reopening of the cabaret venue Feinstein’s/54 Below in Manhattan.Iconis, a composer, lyricist and performer beloved among young musical theater fans, was joking, but before diving into an alternately goofy and poignant set with the actor and singer George Salazar, he added, earnestly, “It’s the most incredible thing to be able to do this show for real human beings, not computer screens.”Moist-eyed reunions between artists and fans have been taking place across the city as Covid-19 restrictions have gradually relaxed. Storied establishments like the jazz clubs Birdland and Blue Note, newer spots such as the Green Room 42 and City Winery at Hudson River Park (which both reopened in April) and the East Village alt-cabaret oases Pangea and Club Cumming are once again offering food, drink and in-the-flesh entertainment. And cabaret veterans — along with other jazz and pop acts, and drag performers — are returning to the work that is their bread and butter.“To see people physiologically responding to music again — toes tapping, heads bopping — that’s almost better than applause,” said the pianist and singer Michael Garin, one of many who used social media to stay connected with fans during the pandemic, and among the first to resume performances for live audiences.But, Garin noted, “It’s not like we’re flipping a switch and bringing everything back to normal.” Particularly in the spring, not everyone was ready to pick up where they left off.Still, it is the love of performing itself, and the perspective gained after a year of lost shows, that is driving many artists’ emotional responses to returning to the stage. Michael Feinstein, the multitasking American songbook champion and namesake for clubs in San Francisco and Los Angeles as well as New York, believes “that anyone who is a performer is coming out of this in a very different place, with a deeper sense of connection and joy and gratitude.”“I cannot imagine any artist now taking any moment of what we do for granted,” he added.It’s Wednesday — go see a show.Metropolitan Diary: No. 7 buzz Dear Diary:I was standing on a No. 7 train heading into Manhattan when a wasp started buzzing around my head and then landed in my hair.An older woman standing nearby noticed what was happening and the panicked expression on my face that said, “What do I do now?”Without a word, she calmly rolled up her newspaper and gently hit me on the head.The wasp, probably somewhat dazed, flew away.— Joan McGrathIllustrated by Agnes Lee. Read more Metropolitan Diary here.New 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

    • 113 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      For One Times Reporter, the Campaign Trail Kept Going

      by

      The Times political correspondent Katie Glueck discusses covering two intense races: the presidency and the New York City Democratic primary for mayor.Times Insider explains who we are and what we do, and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.Katie Glueck, the chief Metro political correspondent for The New York Times, is used to juggling multiple deadlines in one day. That can simply be part of the job when you cover more than a dozen major candidates in New York City’s Democratic primary for mayor, which was called in favor of Eric L. Adams on Tuesday, according to The Associated Press.But Ms. Glueck is no stranger to elections. Before this race, she was the lead reporter covering Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s presidential campaign, an 18-month marathon. (She switched to her Metro assignment in January.) Ms. Glueck recently discussed how covering the mayoral race stacks up against covering a presidential election — and how she manages to stay on top of the news when she isn’t breaking it herself.How does covering a mayoral race compare with covering a presidential one?Covering a presidential campaign, in nonpandemic circumstances, involves far-flung travel. But New York is incredibly diverse, so with the mayoral campaign, I’m also reporting from all kinds of different places, even if the geographic area is smaller. Also, when you’re covering the mayor’s race, you often get more access to the candidates. As I recall, Mr. Biden was willing to help voters stay in touch with him and his team, and happily hopped on the phone with a given voter’s relative — but unlike the mayoral candidates, he was less likely to jump on his cellphone to chat with the reporters covering him, though we tried to talk with him every chance we got.Which race were people more passionate about?The presidential one, initially. Especially in the Democratic primary, when the focus was on who could defeat Donald Trump. With the mayor’s race, it understandably took some voters longer to engage with a race that began amid the throes of the pandemic — but those who did, often did so because they realized just how incredibly consequential the contest was for the future of the city. What challenges did the pandemic present for your reporting?The mayor’s race, for many months, was conducted largely over Zoom, which, at first, made it more difficult to understand what messages most resonated with the electorate. Luckily, the mayor’s race took on more of the feeling of a traditional race toward the end, when the candidates were out more consistently and we could see them engaging more frequently with voters.Why did you become a political reporter?I love covering American politics, whether it’s talking with voters about what motivates them, or capturing how political figures — often with larger-than-life personalities — are battling to win them over. It’s a real privilege to try to assess the mood of the country or the city, whether on a presidential or mayoral level. Both kinds of races have major implications for the daily lives of Americans, and we take the responsibility of trying to get the story right very seriously. On a lighter note, New York politics is raucous, unpredictable and so much fun. At the presidential level, you get to see different parts of the country and meet fascinating political characters — and consult with your colleagues on must-visit restaurants wherever you’ve landed.How do you keep up with all the news on the campaign trail?Of course, I read what my colleagues are writing, as well as what our competitors are up to, a little bit nervously. Watching NY1 is vital at the city level. And I spend some time on Twitter — I’m not even the most prolific tweeter, I’m just watching!You’ve published more than 600 articles over the past two years, according to The New York Times’s archives. Are you able to take days off?It’s a seven-days-a-week kind of job during campaign season, in both cases. During campaigns, the candidates want to be out talking to voters, and they often need to do that on Saturdays. You don’t get a lot of sleep — my coffee habit has been a serious addiction since I was a teenager, and it has only intensified in the years since. Once the primary is over, I’m hoping to escape for a quick vacation. After covering the presidential campaign, I have lots of Marriott points to use!Anywhere specific in mind?My husband and I took a couple of very cold road trips last year: We went to Maine in November, which was beautiful, if freezing, and to a very cold beach in December. I’m hoping after this primary I can go to a beach when it’s warm. More

    • 100 Shares159 Views

      in Elections

      Eric Adams Wins Democratic Primary for NYC Mayor

      by

      Mr. Adams held off Kathryn Garcia after a count of 118,000 absentee ballots saw his substantial lead on primary night narrow to a single percentage point.Eric L. Adams, who rose from poverty to become an iconoclastic police captain and the borough president of Brooklyn, declared victory in the Democratic nomination for mayor of New York City on Tuesday, putting him on track to become the second Black mayor in the history of the nation’s largest city.The contest, which was called by The Associated Press on Tuesday night, was seen as one of the city’s most critical elections in a generation, with the winner expected to help set New York on a recovery course from the economic devastation of Covid-19 and from the longstanding racial and socioeconomic inequalities that the pandemic deepened.But as the campaign entered its final months, a spike in shootings and homicides drove public safety and crime to the forefront of voters’ minds, and Mr. Adams — the only leading candidate with a law enforcement background — moved urgently to demonstrate authority on the issue.Mr. Adams held an 8,400-vote lead over Kathryn Garcia, a margin of one percentage point — small enough that it was not immediately clear whether she or any of his opponents would contest the result in court. All three leading candidates had filed to maintain the option to challenge the results. If no one does so, Mr. Adams’s victory could be certified as soon as next week.“While there are still some very small amounts of votes to be counted, the results are clear: An historic, diverse, five-borough coalition led by working-class New Yorkers has led us to victory in the Democratic primary for mayor of New York City,” Mr. Adams, 60, said in a statement.Yet neither Ms. Garcia nor Maya Wiley, a former counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio who finished in third place, was ready to offer a concession on Tuesday, with each offering brief statements that vaguely alluded to their next steps.The results came after the city’s Board of Elections counted an additional 118,000 absentee ballots and then deployed a ranked-choice elimination system — the first time New York has used it in a mayoral election.Kathryn Garcia moved ahead to second place on the strength of ranked-choice balloting but could not surpass Mr. Adams.Desiree Rios for The New York TimesThere are potentially several thousand votes still to be counted, which may include affidavit votes and defective absentee ballots that voters can fix within the next week. Although the Board of Elections could not provide a precise number of those votes on Tuesday, the Adams campaign said there were not enough for Ms. Garcia to overtake him.Lindsey Green, a spokeswoman for Ms. Garcia, said in a statement that campaign officials were “currently seeking additional clarity on the number of outstanding ballots and are committed to supporting the Democratic nominee.”Under the ranked-choice voting system, voters could rank up to five candidates on their ballots in preferential order. Because Mr. Adams did not receive more than 50 percent of first-choice votes on the initial tally, the winner was decided by ranked-choice elimination.Thirteen Democratic candidates were whittled down one by one, with the candidate with the fewest first-place votes eliminated, and those votes were redistributed to the voters’ next-ranked choice. Ms. Wiley, who emerged late in the primary as a left-wing standard-bearer, was eliminated following the seventh round of tabulations.Ms. Garcia won far more of Ms. Wiley’s votes than Mr. Adams did, but not quite enough to close the gap.Still, it was a striking result for Ms. Garcia, a candidate who until recently was little known and who lacked the institutional support and the political operation that helped propel Mr. Adams, a veteran city politician.In heavily Democratic New York City, Mr. Adams will be the overwhelming favorite in the general election against Curtis Sliwa, the Republican nominee and the founder of the Guardian Angels.“Now we must focus on winning in November so that we can deliver on the promise of this great city for those who are struggling, who are underserved and who are committed to a safe, fair, affordable future for all New Yorkers,” Mr. Adams said in his statement.The final-round matchup between Mr. Adams and Ms. Garcia illustrated sharp divisions within the Democratic Party along the lines of race, class and education.Mr. Adams, who cast himself as a blue-collar candidate, led in every borough except Manhattan in the tally of first-choice votes and was the strong favorite among working-class Black and Latino voters. He also demonstrated strength with white voters who held more moderate views, especially, some data suggests, among those voters who did not have college degrees — a coalition that has been likened to the one that propelled President Biden to the Democratic nomination in 2020.Ms. Garcia, a former sanitation commissioner who ran on a message of technocratic competence, was popular with white moderate voters across the five boroughs.But she was overwhelmingly the candidate of Manhattan, dominating in some of the wealthiest ZIP codes in the country. She appealed to highly educated and more affluent voters across the ideological spectrum there and in parts of brownstone Brooklyn, even as she struggled to connect with voters of color elsewhere in the kinds of numbers it would have taken to win.The results capped a remarkable stretch in the city’s political history: The race began in a pandemic and took several unexpected twists in the final weeks, as one candidate confronted accusations of sexual misconduct dating back decades; another faced a campaign implosion; and Mr. Adams, under fire over residency questions, offered reporters a tour of the Brooklyn apartment where he says he lives.Most recently, it was colored by a vote-tallying disaster at the Board of Elections, leaving simmering concerns among Democrats about whether the eventual outcome would leave voters divided and mistrustful of the city’s electoral process. In a statement Tuesday night, Ms. Wiley thanked her supporters and expressed grave concerns about the Board of Elections.“We will have more to say about the next steps shortly,” the statement said. “Today we simply must recommit ourselves to a reformed Board of Elections and build new confidence in how we administer voting in New York City. New York City’s voters deserve better, and the B.O.E. must be completely remade following what can only be described as a debacle.”Ms. Garcia came in third place among voters who cast ballots in person on Primary Day and during the early voting period, trailing both Mr. Adams and Ms. Wiley. But on the strength of ranked-choice voting, she surged into second place, with significant support from voters who had ranked Ms. Wiley and Andrew Yang, a former presidential candidate, as their top choices.Ms. Garcia and Mr. Yang spent time during the final days of the race campaigning together and appearing on joint campaign literature, a team-up that plainly benefited Ms. Garcia under the ranked-choice process after Mr. Yang, who began the race as a front-runner but plummeted to fourth place on Primary Day, dropped out.Maya Wiley, who had the second highest number of first-place votes, lost ground during the ranked-choice process.Hilary Swift for The New York TimesMs. Wiley, a favorite of younger left-wing voters, had sought to build a broad multiracial coalition, and she earned the support of some of New York’s most prominent Democratic members of Congress. Mr. Adams and Ms. Garcia both ran as relative moderates on policy issues, including policing, education and their postures toward the business and real estate communities.The apparent victory of Mr. Adams, who embraces a relatively expansive role for law enforcement in promoting public safety, amounts to a rebuke of the left wing of his party that promoted far-reaching efforts to scale back the power of the police. The race was a vital if imperfect test of Democratic attitudes around crime amid a national wave of gun violence in American cities.Mr. Adams pushed for urgent action to combat a rise in gun violence and troubling incidents of subway crimes as well as bias attacks, especially against Asian Americans and Jews. While crime rates are nowhere near those of more violent earlier eras, policing still became the most divisive subject in the mayoral race.But some older voters had first heard about Mr. Adams when he was a younger member of the police force, pushing to rein in police misconduct.That background helped him emerge as a candidate with perceived credibility on issues of both combating crime and curbing police violence. And some Democrats, aware that national Republicans are eager to caricature their party as insufficiently concerned about crime, have taken note of Mr. Adams’s messaging — even if his career and life story are, in practice, difficult for other candidates to automatically replicate.“What Eric Adams has said quite well is that we need to listen to communities that are concerned about public safety, even as we fight for critical reforms in policing and racial justice more broadly in our society,” said Representative Sean Patrick Maloney, a New York Democrat and the chairman of the Democratic House campaign arm, who endorsed Mr. Adams the day before the primary.While Mr. Adams was named the winner on Tuesday night, he faces significant challenges in unifying the city around his candidacy. He has faced scrutiny over transparency issues concerning his tax and real estate disclosures; his fund-raising practices and even questions of residency, issues that may intensify under the glare of the nominee’s spotlight, and certainly as mayor, should he win as expected in November.Michael Gold More

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      Why New York’s Election Debacle Is Likely to Fuel Conspiracy Theories

      by

      Republicans have seized on the botched release of results from the mayor’s race — but the overall effect on public trust goes deeper.It has been one week since the New York City Board of Elections botched the release of preliminary ranked-choice tabulations from the city’s mayoral race, counting 135,000 dummy ballots that employees had used to test a computer system and then failed to delete.It was a stunning display of carelessness even from an agency long known for its dysfunction, and the reverberations will continue long after Tuesday evening, when Eric Adams was declared the winner of the Democratic primary race by The Associated Press. (You can follow the latest news here.) That’s because, while the mistake was discovered within hours and corrected by the next day, it provided purveyors of right-wing disinformation with ammunition as powerful as anything they could have invented.Some supporters of former President Donald J. Trump quickly suggested that the results of the 2020 election might also have been miscounted. (Exhaustive investigations have made it very clear that they weren’t.) Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, called ranked-choice voting “a corrupt scam” — even though problems at the Board of Elections far predate it — and tweeted: “How can anyone trust that a voter’s fourth-place choice was accurately tabulated on the eighth round of ranking? Look at the debacle in New York City right now.” Mr. Trump himself suggested falsely that the true results would never be known.“We had an election where we did much better than we did the first time, and amazingly, we lost,” Mr. Trump said at an event in Texas on Wednesday. “Check out the New York election today, by the way. They just realized it’s a disaster. They’re unable to count the votes. Did you see it? It just came out. They’re missing 135,000 votes. They put 135,000 make-believe votes in. Our elections are a disaster.”The disinformation fueled by New York’s mistake may not end up being compelling to Americans who haven’t already bought into the lie that the 2020 election was stolen. But it is very likely, especially among New Yorkers, to undermine overall trust in public institutions — and that sort of distrust creates fertile ground for disinformation to grow.“The average New York City Democrat probably doesn’t look to Donald Trump or Tom Cotton as a validator, but it does fit into that general narrative that’s been pushed into the ether for months,” said Melissa Ryan, the chief executive of CARD Strategies, a consulting firm that helps organizations combat disinformation and online extremism. “Trust in institutions is at an all-time low, and whenever something like this happens, folks who aren’t necessarily right-wing hard-liners or believers in conspiracies generally — it’s going to erode their trust with another institution.”That’s significant, Ms. Ryan said, given that “people are susceptible to disinformation in part because they don’t trust institutions already, so they’re more inclined to believe the worst possible version.”There is some irony to the possibility that the Board of Elections’ error will undermine trust in election results, because it in fact revealed how quickly an actual miscount becomes apparent.The error should never have happened, but once it did, it “was detected less than hours after it was displayed,” said David J. Becker, the executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research. “And yet we are now eight months past the November election, and the losing presidential candidate still can’t present any evidence of any systematic fraud anywhere in the country. They’ve had eight months, and the New York City problem was detected in probably eight minutes.”More to the point, because there is a paper trail, “we will get the right winner, just like we got the right winner in 2020,” Mr. Becker said. “If we can look at the facts of what happened and say, ‘Here’s where the structure failed, here’s where personnel failed, here’s where the process failed,’ and try to reform that, that would be a very, very positive outcome. But even with those mistakes, we’re going to get the correct answer.”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

    • 100 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Democratic Turnout in N.Y.C.'s Feisty Mayoral Primary? 26%

      by

      With one of the most competitive mayor’s races in recent memory and a number of hotly contested down-ballot primaries, the turnout in last month’s Democratic mayoral primary in New York City was the strongest in years.So far, the Board of Elections has counted the ballots of about 820,000 registered Democrats who voted in-person in the mayoral primary. As of Friday, an additional 125,794 Democratic absentee ballots had been returned, likely bringing the turnout to at least 945,000 voters.That means that roughly 26 percent of the city’s 3.7 million registered Democrats voted in the mayoral primary this year — which is higher than, say, the 22 percent that voted in 2013, the last time there was a wide-open mayoral race. Bill de Blasio ended up prevailing. However, the turnout was low by historical standards; a number of bitterly fought races in the 1970s and 1980s drew more voters.The Democrats’ choice will be the overwhelming favorite in the general election against Curtis Sliwa, who won the Republican primary with even lower turnout. The elections board has tallied about 55,000 in-person votes from Republicans, and another 5,800 absentee ballots have been returned. That total of 60,800 ballots accounts for about 10 percent of the city’s registered Republicans. More

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      What to Expect From Tuesday’s Vote Tally in the N.Y.C. Mayor’s Race

      by

      The new results should include most of the roughly 125,000 Democratic absentee ballots, which were not included in last week’s count.New York City’s Board of Elections will release a new tally of votes in the Democratic primary for mayor on Tuesday. Let’s hope it goes better than it did last week, when officials announced inaccurate figures and had to retract them.The updated tally on Tuesday should include most of the roughly 125,000 Democratic absentee ballots, which were not included in the first count. It should give us a better sense of who is likely to win the race, though final results are not expected until next week.In the corrected preliminary tally released after the retraction last week, Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, was leading his closest rival, Kathryn Garcia, the city’s former sanitation commissioner, by just 14,755 votes, a margin of around 2 percentage points. Mr. Adams needs to hold on to his lead, while Ms. Garcia is hoping to overtake him by winning more absentee votes in Manhattan and by appearing on more ballots as voters’ second or third choice. Maya Wiley, a former counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio, was in third place and believes she still has a chance to win.If Mr. Adams does win the primary — and the general election in November — he would be the city’s second Black mayor after David N. Dinkins, who was elected in 1989. Ms. Wiley is also Black; she and Ms. Garcia are both seeking to become the first woman to be elected mayor of New York.The city’s new ranked-choice voting system allowed voters to rank up to five candidates in order of preference. Since no one won more than 50 percent of first-choice votes for mayor, the winner will be decided by a process of elimination: Lower-polling candidates are dropped out in rounds, with the votes initially counted for them distributed to whichever candidate their voters ranked next.Officials did not say when to expect the results on Tuesday, but the Board of Elections announced in a cryptic post on Twitter in the morning that the new results should arrive during “brunch special” hours instead of “club hours” late at night. That prompted a playful debate on social media over when exactly it is appropriate to eat brunch in New York City. But the clock ticked into the later afternoon hours without results, bringing early dinner within view. More

    • 88 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      More Results Expected in the Mayor’s Race

      by

      [Want to get New York Today by email? Here’s the sign-up.]It’s Tuesday. Weather: Humid and mostly sunny, with a high in the mid-90s, and watch out for a severe storm this evening. Dangerously hot weather is expected through tomorrow. Alternate-side parking: In effect until July 19 (Eid al-Adha). Victor J. Blue for The New York TimesIt has been two weeks since New York City residents last cast ballots in the Democratic mayoral primary. And while Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, holds a lead in the results released so far, it is not yet clear who will win.Today, elections officials are poised to release a new tally of results that could shed more light on who will ultimately prevail: a tabulation that incorporates for the first time the votes of tens of thousands of New Yorkers who cast ballots by mail.How did we get here?Under the city’s new ranked-choice system, voters could rank up to five candidates on their ballots in order of preference.Two weeks ago, elections officials began releasing preliminary results that included the first-choice votes of people who cast their ballots in person during the early-voting period or on Primary Day. In those results, Mr. Adams led Maya Wiley, a former counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio, by 9.6 percentage points, and Kathryn Garcia, a former sanitation commissioner, by 12.5 points.But since Mr. Adams did not get more than 50 percent of the first-choice votes, the ranked-choice system kicks in: lowest-polling candidates are eliminated a round at a time, with their votes reallocated to whichever remaining candidate those voters ranked next.A preliminary ranked-choice tabulation was conducted last week, showing Ms. Garcia trailing Mr. Adams by only two percentage points.That tally, however, did not include the votes of any of roughly 125,000 outstanding absentee ballots.What happens today?Elections officials are expected to conduct another ranked-choice tabulation that includes most of those absentee ballots.For either Ms. Garcia or Ms. Wiley to beat Mr. Adams, they would need a strong showing in these results.Is it over after today?No. Voters are still allowed to correct errors with mail-in ballot envelopes that might prevent their ballots from being counted until this Friday. Final results are expected to arrive sometime next week.And the campaigns of Ms. Wiley, Mr. Adams and Ms. Garcia have filed lawsuits preserving their right to challenge the election results.From The Times‘Maybe We Can Be Friends’: New Yorkers Re-emerge in a Changed CityA Gifted Writer Returns With a Supremely Harrowing NovelMoving Downtown, to the Center of the ActionMet Opera Strikes Deal With Stagehands Over Pandemic PayWant more news? Check out our full coverage.The Mini Crossword: Here is today’s puzzle.What we’re readingAbout 65,000 shells and aerial effects were launched from five barges near Midtown and Long Island City in what organizers billed as the biggest July 4 show ever. [Gothamist]A 33-year-old man was fatally shot outside a public housing development in the Bronx, police said. [Daily News]City officials are considering a proposal to create 24-hour entertainment districts where people can party all night. [Associated Press]And finally: A library transformed The Times’s James S. Russell writes:Muddling along for four decades in a nondescript former department store, the Mid-Manhattan library, at Fifth Avenue and 40th Street, served a growing swarm of local residents and commuters. But the branch steadily became dilapidated — an “embarrassment” to the New York Public Library system, as Anthony W. Marx, its president, put it.After three years of construction and $200 million, the library system was ready to reopen its largest circulating branch in spring 2020. Instead, the pandemic extended the closure. The Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library, as it is now known (after a $55 million gift), finally threw open its doors to unlimited browsing in June.Its theatrically expressive heart is a dramatic atrium billowing upward from the second floor, displaying the vast circulating collection of up to 400,000 volumes. The branch is phasing in its extensive programming over the coming months. (The New York and Queens library systems will fully reopen today, and Brooklyn will follow a few days later.)Libraries have taken on the great task of helping people acquire knowledge, whatever the means of delivery, and have become more central to community life. The sociologist Eric Klinenberg made libraries Exhibit A in his 2018 book, “Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life.” He argued that “social infrastructure” — public places where people mingle and interact — can help reduce crime, isolation, and even strengthen communities.It’s Tuesday — how about a new book?Metropolitan Diary: Last car Dear Diary:I parked my car at an outdoor lot near Madison Square Garden while my friend and I went to the Rangers game. After the game, we walked to Virgil’s and spent some time catching up over a leisurely barbecue dinner.On the way back to the car, I got a hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach when the parking lot came into view. From a distance, it appeared that my car was the only one left in the lot.My uneasy feeling was soon justified. When I left the car there earlier in the evening, I had somehow failed to notice the sign clearly stating that the lot closed at 11 p.m.As my friend and I stood helplessly at the locked gate pondering our stupidity and predicament, I saw a piece of paper taped to the fence and flapping in the wind. It was a handwritten note.“I’m in the Irish pub around the corner,” it said. “Meet me there.”— Vincent BucciIllustrated by Agnes Lee. Read more Metropolitan Diary here.New 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

    • 125 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      Absentee Ballots May Determine if Eric Adams Wins Mayor's Race

      by

      The tallying of more than 125,000 absentee ballots will determine whether Eric Adams retains his lead in the Democratic primary.In a bland, sprawling warehouse in Manhattan, election workers carefully inspected piles of absentee ballots on Friday, an exercise that might be described as tedious if it were not so important.The ballots will most likely decide the winner of New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary, a race that is currently led by Eric Adams, who is seeking to become the city’s second Black mayor. His lead over his two closest rivals, Kathryn Garcia and Maya Wiley, was small enough that either could theoretically pass him once more than 125,000 absentee ballots are factored in.But Mr. Adams’s campaign suggested that its informal, unofficial tally of the absentee ballots counted so far indicated that he might have slightly widened his lead in first-place votes — placing an even heavier burden on Ms. Garcia and Ms. Wiley to close the gap through the city’s new ranked-choice voting system.Under that system, voters could rank up to five candidates on their ballots in order of preference. Because Mr. Adams did not collect more than 50 percent of first-choice votes, the process moves to an elimination-round method: The lowest-polling candidates are eliminated a round at a time, with their votes reallocated to whichever remaining candidate those voters ranked next. The process continues until there is a winner.In the first round, among people who cast their ballots in person during the early-voting period or on Primary Day, Mr. Adams led Ms. Wiley by 9.6 percentage points, and Ms. Garcia by 12.5 points. When a preliminary ranked-choice tabulation was conducted on Wednesday, Ms. Garcia edged slightly ahead of Ms. Wiley, and trailed Mr. Adams by only two points.The city’s Board of Elections began counting absentee ballots on Monday and plans to release a new ranked-choice tally that includes most of them on Tuesday. A board spokeswoman declined on Friday to discuss the results of the counting until then.For either Ms. Garcia or Ms. Wiley to overtake Mr. Adams, they must outperform him in first-place absentee votes, or hope that enough absentee voters ranked him low on their ballots or left him off entirely.The city Board of Elections is expected to release the results of the absentee voting on Tuesday.Victor J. Blue for The New York TimesMs. Garcia, who beat Mr. Adams in Manhattan in the in-person vote tally, also showed strength in absentee ballots from the borough, according to a preliminary count of unofficial results obtained by The New York Times. She was the first choice on 9,043 ballots of 23,739 ballots counted as of Thursday night, or about 38 percent. She was the second or third choice on another 7,187 ballots.Mr. Adams was the first choice on 2,999 absentee ballots from Manhattan, or about 13 percent, and the second or third choice on another 5,304. Manhattan was the only borough he did not win in the in-person tally. The absentee ballots’ importance was underscored by how many campaign workers and volunteers have been observing the vetting and counting process this week.On Friday, Ms. Wiley had several volunteers at a site in Manhattan where absentee ballots were being counted. Mr. Adams’s campaign had many more — a sign that his campaign, with more money and institutional support, has often been more muscular and organized than those of his rivals.Mr. Adams had a team of volunteers seated at every table, diligently tallying his votes and Ms. Garcia’s with pens and notebooks. Occasionally, a volunteer challenged a ballot’s legitimacy over a signature or date.At one point, a small commotion could be heard.A volunteer for Mr. Adams was challenging a ballot backing Ms. Garcia because it had a stray pen mark. Election workers and campaign volunteers gathered around the table to scrutinize the ballot, and then set it aside for further examination.“Our team has been here all week making sure every single vote is counted,” said Ydanis Rodriguez, a City Council member from Upper Manhattan who is an ally of Mr. Adams’s. Mr. Rodriguez was leading the Adams campaign’s presence at the elections board site, leaving only briefly on Wednesday to vote on the city budget.Ms. Garcia’s campaign did not have volunteers at the Manhattan site, but her representatives said that members of the campaign’s legal team — including the prominent election lawyers Stanley Schlein and Sarah Steiner — were monitoring the proceedings.Ms. Wiley’s campaign sent an email to supporters on Thursday seeking volunteers to visit absentee sites on Friday.“All ballots have been cast, and while we cannot persuade any more New Yorkers to vote for Team Maya, we can make sure that every single vote counts, and is counted accurately!” the email said.The campaigns are allowed to monitor the absentee count and to challenge ballots that may be ineligible. Election workers wore face masks on Friday and held ballots up against a plastic partition so that campaign volunteers could read them. One ballot, for instance, had several first choices marked for mayor. An election worker told volunteers that it would be considered void when it went through a ballot-scanning machine.Ms. Wiley’s campaign filed a lawsuit on Thursday preserving its right to challenge the election results, following similar moves by the campaigns of Mr. Adams and Ms. Garcia. Ms. Wiley argued that a full hand recount should be required if a decision about who gets eliminated under ranked-choice voting comes down to a “razor-thin” margin.Under the preliminary ranked-choice tally conducted Wednesday, Ms. Wiley fell just short of getting to the final round, trailing Ms. Garcia by fewer than 350 votes.“This is a wide-open race and as is standard procedure, my campaign filed a petition to preserve the right to challenge the results should we believe it is necessary,” Ms. Wiley said in a statement on Friday. “For now, we must allow the democratic process to continue and ensure every vote is counted transparently.”The Board of Elections is under close scrutiny after an embarrassing fiasco on Tuesday that forced it to retract preliminary ranked-choice vote totals it had released just hours before.The board had mistakenly included more than 130,000 sample ballots, used to test the ranked-choice software, in the preliminary count. The board ran the ranked-choice program again on Wednesday, with the result again showing Mr. Adams ahead of Ms. Garcia and Ms. Wiley.Despite the vote-count debacle, Dawn Sandow, the board’s deputy executive director, sent a congratulatory email to staff members on Thursday. In the email, Ms. Sandow acknowledged that there had been “negative articles bashing this agency,” but she insisted that board employees had risen to the occasion.“The amount of changes thrown at us to implement in a short period of time during a worldwide pandemic was unsurmountable,” she wrote, “and WE DID IT ALL SUCCESSFULLY!”Dana Rubinstein and Katie Glueck contributed reporting. More