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      New York Mayor’s Race in Chaos After Elections Board Pulls Back Results

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      The extraordinary sequence of events seeded further confusion about the outcome, and threw the closely watched Democratic primary contest into a new period of uncertainty.The New York City mayor’s race plunged into chaos on Tuesday night when the city Board of Elections released a new tally of votes in the Democratic mayoral primary, and then removed the tabulations from its website after citing a “discrepancy.”The results released earlier in the day had suggested that the race between Eric Adams and his two closest rivals had tightened significantly.But just a few hours after releasing the preliminary results, the elections board issued a cryptic tweet revealing a “discrepancy” in the report, saying that it was working with its “technical staff to identify where the discrepancy occurred.”By Tuesday evening, the tabulations had been taken down, replaced by a new advisory that the ranked-choice results would be available “starting on June 30.”Then, around 10:30 p.m., the board finally released a statement, explaining that it had failed to remove sample ballot images used to test its ranked-choice voting software. When the board ran the program, it counted “both test and election night results, producing approximately 135,000 additional records,” the statement said. The ranked-choice numbers, it said, would be tabulated again.The extraordinary sequence of events seeded further confusion about the outcome, and threw the closely watched contest into a new period of uncertainty at a consequential moment for the city.For the Board of Elections, which has long been plagued by dysfunction and nepotism, this was its first try at implementing ranked-choice voting on a citywide scale, and skeptics had expressed doubts about the board’s ability to pull off the process despite its successful use in other cities.Under ranked-choice voting, voters can list up to five candidates on their ballots in preferential order. If no candidate receives more than 50 percent of first-choice votes in the first round, the winner is decided by a process of elimination: As the lower-polling candidates are eliminated, their votes are reallocated to whichever candidate those voters ranked next, and the process continues until there is a winner.The Board of Elections released preliminary, unofficial ranked-choice tabulations on Tuesday afternoon, showing that Mr. Adams — who had held a significant advantage on primary night — was narrowly ahead of Kathryn Garcia in the ballots cast in person during early voting or on Primary Day. Maya D. Wiley, who came in second place in the initial vote count, was close behind in third place.A few hours later, the board disclosed its unspecified discrepancy, and it was not at all clear Tuesday night how accurate the most recent tally was, or if it was accurate at all.The results may well be scrambled again: Even after the Board of Elections sorts through the preliminary tally, it must count around 124,000 Democratic absentee ballots. Once they are tabulated, the board will take the new total that includes them and run a new set of ranked-choice elimination rounds, with a final result not expected until mid-July.New York Primary Election ResultsSee full results and maps from the New York City mayoral race and other primaries.Some Democrats, bracing for an acrimonious new chapter in the race, are concerned that the incremental release of results by the Board of Elections — and the discovery of a possible error — may stir distrust of ranked-choice voting and sow divisions along racial and class lines when the outcome is ultimately announced.In a tweet on Tuesday evening, Mr. Adams sought to project assuredness.“Earlier today, the Board of Elections released a ranked choice voting simulation based on last week’s election results that they have since acknowledged include ‘discrepancies,’” Mr. Adams wrote. “We are waiting for an explanation and still confident in our lead.”If elected, Mr. Adams would be the city’s second Black mayor, after David N. Dinkins. Some of Mr. Adams’s supporters have already cast the ranked-choice process as an attempt to disenfranchise voters of color, an argument that intensified among some backers on Tuesday afternoon as the race had appeared to tighten, and is virtually certain to escalate should he lose his primary night lead to Ms. Garcia, who is white.Surrogates for Mr. Adams have suggested without evidence that an apparent ranked-choice alliance between Ms. Garcia and another rival, Andrew Yang, could amount to an attempt to suppress the votes of Black and Latino New Yorkers; Mr. Adams himself claimed that the alliance was aimed at preventing a “person of color” from winning the race.In the final days of the race, Ms. Garcia and Mr. Yang campaigned together across the city, especially in neighborhoods that are home to sizable Asian American communities, and appeared together on campaign literature.To advocates of ranked-choice voting, the round-by-round shuffling of outcomes is part of the process of electing a candidate with broad appeal. Mr. Adams has said that he would accept the results of the election, even as he and his allies have long been critical of ranked-choice voting.But if Ms. Garcia or Ms. Wiley were to prevail, the process — which was approved by voters in a 2019 ballot measure — would likely attract fresh scrutiny, with some of Mr. Adams’s backers and others already urging a new referendum on it. By Tuesday night, though, it was the Board of Elections that was attracting ire from seemingly all corners.Betsy Gotbaum, the city’s former public advocate who now runs Citizens Union, a good-government group, said “the entire country is watching” the Board of Elections. “New Yorkers deserve elections, and election administrators, that they can have the utmost faith in,” Ms. Gotbaum added.Kathryn Garcia, one of Mr. Adams’s chief rivals, said it was important to ensure “that New York City’s voices are heard.”Hilary Swift for The New York TimesWhile it is difficult, it is not unheard-of for a trailing candidate in a ranked-choice election to eventually win the race through later rounds of voting — that happened in Oakland, Calif., in 2010, and nearly occurred in San Francisco in 2018.The winner of New York’s Democratic primary, who is almost certain to become the city’s next mayor, will face Curtis Sliwa, the founder of the Guardian Angels, who won the Republican primary.According to the now-withdrawn tabulation released Tuesday, Ms. Wiley, a former counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio, nearly made it to the final round. She finished closely behind Ms. Garcia, the former sanitation commissioner, before being eliminated in the penultimate round of the preliminary exercise.After the count of in-person ballots last week, Ms. Garcia had trailed Ms. Wiley by about 2.6 percentage points. Asked if she had been in touch with Ms. Wiley’s team, Ms. Garcia suggested there had been staff-level conversations.“The campaigns have been speaking to each other,” Ms. Garcia said in a phone call on Tuesday afternoon, saying the two candidates had not yet spoken directly. “Hopefully we don’t have to step in with attorneys. But it is about really ensuring that New York City’s voices are heard.”Maya Wiley, another top contender, renewed her call to “count every vote.”Hilary Swift for The New York TimesMs. Wiley ran well to the left of Ms. Garcia on a number of vital policy matters, including around policing and on some education questions. Either candidate would be the first woman elected mayor of New York, and Ms. Wiley would be the city’s first Black female mayor.“I said on election night, we must allow the democratic process to continue and count every vote so that New Yorkers have faith in our democracy and government,” Ms. Wiley said in a statement on Tuesday. “And we must all support its results.”Mr. Adams, a former police captain and a relative moderate on several key issues, was a non-starter for many progressive voters who may have preferred Ms. Garcia and her focus on competence over any especially ideological message.But early results suggested that Mr. Adams had significant strength among working-class voters of color, and some traction among white voters with moderate views.City Councilman I. Daneek Miller, an Adams supporter who is pressing for a new referendum on ranked-choice voting, suggested in a text message on Tuesday that the system had opened the door to “an attempt to eliminate the candidate of moderate working people and traditionally marginalized communities,” as he implicitly criticized the Yang-Garcia alliance.“It is incumbent on us now to address the issue of ranked voting and how it is being weaponized against a wide portion of the public,” said Mr. Miller, the co-chair of the Black, Latino, and Asian Caucus on the City Council.Other close observers of the election separately expressed discomfort with the decision to release a ranked-choice tally without accounting for absentee ballots.“There is real danger that voters will come to believe a set of facts about the race that will be disproven when all votes are in,” said Ben Greenfield, a senior survey data analyst at Change Research, which conducted polling for a pro-Garcia PAC. “The risk is that this could take a system that’s already new and confusing and increase people’s sense of mistrust.”Dana Rubinstein, Jeffery C. Mays, Anne Barnard, Andy Newman and Mihir Zaveri contributed reporting. More

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      What to Expect as Early Ranked-Choice Results Are Released in New York

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      Absentee ballots won’t be included, but data to be released Tuesday could signal the way vote totals will shift as the field is officially winnowed.New Yorkers will get one step closer on Tuesday to learning who their next mayor is likely to be.Because an initial count of ballots showed that none of the Democratic candidates got more than 50 percent of the first-choice votes cast by those who voted in person last Tuesday or during the early voting period, the city’s new ranked-choice system has kicked in.Voters could rank up to five candidates in the mayor’s race, and the Democratic nominee, who is almost certain to be next mayor, will now be decided through a process of elimination that begins on Tuesday.Here’s what you need to know:How will the ranked-choice system play out on Tuesday?The city’s Board of Elections is set to reveal the first, preliminary round of ranked-choice results, which will give a fuller, if still incomplete, picture of how the vote totals are shaking out.Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, led Maya D. Wiley, a former counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio, by 9.4 percentage points after first-choice votes were counted, and he was ahead of Kathryn Garcia, a former city sanitation commissioner, by about 12 percentage points.A winner will not be certified on Tuesday, in part because tens of thousands of absentee ballots will not be included in the preliminary tally. It is also difficult, but mathematically possible, for either Ms. Wiley or Ms. Garcia to catch Mr. Adams.The elimination rounds work like this: The candidate with the least first-choice votes is eliminated. Those votes are then reallocated to the candidates whom his or her voters ranked second. The candidate in last place after that reallocation is then eliminated, with their votes reallocated to second choices, and so on, until two candidates remain. The one with the most votes is the winner.Voters casting their ballots on Primary Day at a public school in Upper Manhattan. An initial ranked-choice tally to be released on Tuesday could indicate which candidates had the broadest appeal.Desiree Rios for The New York TimesAre the elimination-round results final?Not yet.What will happen on Tuesday is essentially an exercise: It will show only who would win based on votes that have already been tallied — that is, who would win if, hypothetically, there were no absentee ballots. Later, after absentee ballots have been counted, the board will take the new total that includes them and run a new set of elimination rounds — the real ones, for the final result.The initial ranked-choice tally may still offer an important snapshot of which candidates had the broadest appeal, as well as insight into how voters grouped, or excluded, certain candidates.As of Monday, there were around 124,000 outstanding Democratic absentee ballots that had not been counted, and more might still trickle in until the deadline on Tuesday.On July 6, there will be a fresh round of results that is expected to include some absentee ballots, and a more complete set of results is expected the following week.What other ranked-choice voting results will be released on Tuesday?The tally will include results for all races in which ranked-choice voting was used, including mayor, comptroller and City Council.In the Democratic primary for comptroller, Brad Lander, a councilman from Brooklyn, leads Corey Johnson, the City Council speaker, by almost 9 percentage points. Mr. Lander has said he looks forward to seeing the tabulation process play out.“Democracy is worth waiting for and we’re looking forward to seeing the ranked vote tabulation tomorrow,” Mr. Lander said.Jumaane Williams has been declared the winner in the public advocate primary.No winner has been declared in the six competitive primaries — five Democratic, one Republican — for borough president, but several candidates received close to, or more than, 40 percent of first-choice votes. Dozens of Democratic City Council primary races also remain undecided.Kathryn Garcia’s campaign expects to gain ground when absentee ballots are counted.Desiree Rios for The New York TimesMaya Wiley trailed Mr. Adams by 9.4 percentage points after the first tally of votes.Hilary Swift for The New York TimesDoes Eric Adams have an insurmountable lead?In most ranked-choice elections in the United States, whoever wins the most first-place votes ends up the final winner. But it is not unprecedented for a candidate trailing in first-place votes after an initial tally to get enough second- and third-place votes to surmount the gap.In a 2018 congressional race in Maine, a Democrat, Jared Golden, defeated a Republican front-runner after votes for independent candidates were reallocated to him. And in a mayoral race in Oakland in 2010, the front-running incumbent lost after the elimination rounds reallocated votes to the eventual winner, Jean Quan.In any case, the New York City mayor’s race is not over. A range of political observers say the final difference between the top two finishers will likely be closer than Mr. Adams’s 9-point lead after the first round of counting.The campaigns of Ms. Garcia and Ms. Wiley have been busy with calculators, maps of voter-turnout results and various polls hinting at what share of other candidates’ votes will go to each of them and to Mr. Adams.The data, they have said, suggests the race is tighter than it looks after the initial ballot tally, and that one of them could still win.A new study by the group Data For Progress suggests that Ms. Garcia can still beat Mr. Adams, and that the gap between him and Ms. Wiley could be within the study’s margin of error.The study sought to combine voters’ professed ranking patterns with their actual first-choice votes: Pollsters asked 601 likely voters on Primary Day how they planned to rank, or had ranked, candidates and then weighted the results to the first-place votes counted so far.Ms. Garcia’s campaign, according to a memo shared last week, expects her to gain considerable ground in the absentee ballot count, because those ballots have been received in higher numbers in districts where she beat both Mr. Adams and Ms. Wiley — districts where in-person turnout was also very high.Campaign advisers for Ms. Wiley last week mapped out how she could prevail in the elimination rounds. Their path to victory, essentially, requires Ms. Garcia to get many of Andrew Yang’s second-choice votes, and Ms. Wiley to get many of Ms. Garcia’s.As Ms. Wiley’s advisers saw it: The top three rivals and Mr. Yang would split the lower-ranking candidates’ votes, with Ms. Wiley picking up a large share from Scott M. Stringer, the city comptroller. Once Mr. Yang is eliminated, Ms. Wiley would get few of his votes, but Ms. Garcia, they believed, would get many, especially in the heavily Asian American districts where she campaigned with Mr. Yang in the final days. If Ms. Wiley then led Ms. Garcia, she might inherit enough of her votes to take the lead.The conclusion, as one Wiley adviser, Jon Paul Lupo, put it, was that “we’re in a nail-biter.”So when will we know the results of the mayor’s race?The Board of Elections is confident that it will be able to certify the results of the entire election, including ranked-choice voting contests and non-ranked contests like races for district attorney and judges, starting the week of July 12.Under changes to election rules that were passed last year, voters are allowed to “cure” or correct errors with mail-in ballot envelopes that might prevent their ballots from being counted. The deadline for receiving cured ballots is July 9.After the board receives those ballots, they will run the ranked-choice voting software again the week of July 12. The results will be used to create the official report for certification.The Associated Press will be closely watching the results that the board releases, said David Scott, the organization’s vice president and managing editor.“Our standard is the same as in any election,” he said in an interview. “We will call it when we are confident the trailing candidates can’t catch up.” More

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      Time to Get Some Ranked-Choice Voting Results

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      [Want to get New York Today by email? Here’s the sign-up.]It’s Tuesday. Weather: Sunny early, then cloudier in the afternoon, with scattered thunderstorms. High in the mid-90s, but because of the humidity it will seem like 100 or more. Alternate-side parking: In effect until Sunday (Independence Day). Sarah Blesener for The New York TimesPrimary Day may have been one week ago. But many races across the city — including the Democratic primary for mayor — are not finished because of ranked-choice voting. Today, elections officials are expected to reveal the first, preliminary round of ranked-choice results, bringing New Yorkers one step closer to knowing who is most likely to become mayor, among other races.[Eric Adams received the most first-choice in-person votes last week. It is difficult, but mathematically possible, for two other candidates to catch up to him.]What happens today?Elections officials will run through the ranked-choice ballots for all votes cast in person on Primary Day and during early voting, offering a fuller (but incomplete) picture of how votes are adding up.A process of elimination will take place that works like this: The candidate with the fewest first-choice votes is eliminated. Those votes are then reallocated to the candidates whom his or her voters ranked second. The candidate in last place after that is then eliminated, with the votes reallocated to each voter’s next choice, and so on, until two candidates remain. The candidate with the most votes would be the winner.In the Democratic race for mayor, Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, led Maya Wiley, a former counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio, by 9.4 percentage points after first-choice votes were counted. Mr. Adams was ahead of Kathryn Garcia, a former city sanitation commissioner, by about 12 points.After running through the ranked-choice votes, those numbers might change.What happens next?The results to be announced on Tuesday won’t be final, in part because tens of thousands of absentee ballots will not be included.The results will show only who would win if there were no absentee ballots. Later, after absentee ballots have been counted, elections officials will run a new set of elimination rounds for the final result, which may take at least two more weeks.As of Monday, there were around 124,000 outstanding Democratic absentee ballots that had not been counted, and more might trickle in before the deadline today.From The TimesLawmakers Sue N.Y.P.D., Saying They Were Beaten With Bicycles at ProtestPolice Officers Will ‘Flood’ Times Square After Another Bystander Is ShotTrump’s Lawyers Make Late Bid to Fend Off Charges Against His BusinessNew York and New Jersey Need an $11B Tunnel. Will Biden Make It Happen?Liquor Laws Once Targeted Gay Bars. Now, One State Is Apologizing.Want more news? Check out our full coverage.The Mini Crossword: Here is today’s puzzle.What we’re readingIn last week’s citywide primary election, voter turnout fell in some areas that were hard-hit by Covid-19. [The City]Several people were arrested when police officers clashed with people celebrating Pride in Washington Square Park. [Gothamist]A police officer was injured after being shot with a BB gun on Staten Island, officials said. [N.Y. Post]And finally: A vibrant Pride weekend The Times’s Julia Carmel writes:New York’s Pride celebrations and protests came back with a vengeance over the weekend, after a muted celebration last year because of the pandemic.Tens of thousands of people took over the streets of Greenwich Village on Sunday, starting impromptu dance parties and embracing the freedom of being together again.Ahlasia Hunter, 23, who was attending her first Pride, danced and cheered from atop a traffic barricade on Sunday afternoon.“Bro, the energy is amazing,” Ms. Hunter said. “If you don’t have a bucket list, you need to start a bucket list — you’ve got to come to Pride.”Last year, as people were encouraged to stay home because of the pandemic, the Pride March, which was celebrating its 50th anniversary, was reduced to a procession of several dozen people with no in-person audience.Though the final weekend of June usually boasts hundreds of Pride events and draws millions of visitors to New York, the largest Pride event in 2020 was the second annual Queer Liberation March — an event that has drawn support for being an anti-police and anti-corporate alternative to more commercial gatherings.Pride also arrived last year during the Black Lives Matter marches and demonstrations that followed the murder of George Floyd. The groundswell prompted popular events like the Dyke March to redirect supporters to Black-led marches and rallies.This year, though the Pride March was virtual once again, thousands of people streamed down Fifth Avenue on Saturday for the Dyke March, while the Queer Liberation March, held for the third time, brought thousands more to the streets on Sunday afternoon.“I’ve been stuck inside for the past year,” said Amaris Cook, 19, who traveled from Springfield, Mass., to attend the Queer Liberation March. “It’s just great to be out again and see other people.”It’s Tuesday — dance in the streets.Metropolitan Diary: Spare tissue Dear Diary:My wife and I were on an escalator at the Port Authority Terminal, on our way home from the theater. I asked my wife, who was two steps ahead of me, if she had a tissue.She said yes and that she would give me one when we reached the top.Suddenly, a hand holding a small pack of tissues reached over my shoulder. I turned to see a woman standing behind me with a smile on her face.“Here you go,” she said, “and keep the package.”— Stuart SchwartzNew York Today is published weekdays around 6 a.m. Sign up here to get it by email. You can also find it at nytoday.com. More

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      What Did New York’s Primaries Mean for Progressives? It’s Complicated.

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      Progressives cheered the results in down-ballot races and in Buffalo, even as the outcome of the mayoral primary appeared less rosy.They may not win Gracie Mansion, but there’s always Buffalo. And Rochester, too.For progressives in New York State, primary elections on Tuesday night brought a number of victories, even as the biggest apple of them all — New York City’s mayoralty — may elude their grasp.Though Eric Adams amassed a sizable lead over Maya D. Wiley, his top rival, in first-choice votes, liberal candidates celebrated victories in down-ballot races in New York City and in the state’s second and third largest cities, wins that they argue demonstrate their ascendancy at the grass-roots level even as they are struggling to flex their power in Washington.In perhaps the biggest upset of the night, India B. Walton, a democratic socialist, defeated a four-term incumbent in the Democratic mayoral primary in Buffalo and cast her victory as a threat to the longtime party establishment.Ms. Walton had promised to safeguard undocumented immigrants, place a moratorium on new charter schools and cut millions from the Police Department budget by ending the role of officers in most mental health emergency calls.“This victory is ours. It is the first of many,” said Ms. Walton. “If you are in an elected office right now, you are being put on notice. We are coming.”India B. Walton delivered her victory speech after defeating the incumbent mayor of Buffalo, Byron Brown, in a Democratic primary.Robert Kirkham/The Buffalo News, via Associated PressAs New Yorkers prepare to wait weeks for final results in the mayoral primary while absentee ballots are counted and ranked-choice tabulations begin, the early returns across the city and state paint a complicated picture. They highlight voters’ embrace of a diverse slate of candidates but reflect generational divides and continued tension as Democrats navigate their identity in the post-Trump era.While the idiosyncratic politics of deeply Democratic New York City are hardly a bellwether for the nation, the results in the mayoral contest in particular point to a progressive movement still charting its way through the kinds of divisive policy issues that split the Democratic Party during last year’s presidential primary.Three of the top four candidates in the election ran on more moderate messages than Ms. Wiley, particularly around crime and policing, and were rewarded with support from a diverse coalition that spanned all five boroughs.But the early news was brighter for progressives elsewhere. Candidates backed by the Working Families Party won City Council seats in Queens, Brooklyn and the Bronx. Jumaane Williams, the city’s public advocate, won more than 70 percent of the vote in his primary. Brad Lander, a council member from Park Slope, is leading in the primary for city comptroller.Jumaane Williams, the New York City public advocate, won more than 70 percent of the vote in his primary.Demetrius Freeman for The New York TimesBrad Lander, a council member who was endorsed by the Working Families Party, leads in the comptroller’s race.Elianel Clinton for The New York TimesIn the Democratic primary for Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg was ahead of Tali Farhadian Weinstein, who sank more than $8 million into her own campaign, infuriating liberals because of her spending and ties to Wall Street. Tiffany Cabán, who narrowly lost a race for Queens district attorney in 2019, is leading in a primary for a City Council seat. And Antonio Reynoso, a council member who represents Williamsburg and Bushwick and once cast himself as a “boombox for progressive values,” leads the contest for Brooklyn borough president.In Washington, progressives have found their ambitions curtailed by a razor-thin margin in the Senate and a refusal by moderate Democrats to support eliminating the filibuster.Voting rights legislation failed this week, prompting concerns from many on the left that President Biden and his administration did not mount a fierce enough push for one of their top priorities. As groups of senators draft dueling infrastructure plans, some liberals worry that the administration will jettison proposals to fight climate change and support caregiving in favor of a compromise that can draw Republican support.And, in recent weeks, liberal candidates have lost a number of competitive primary contests. In Virginia, former Gov. Terry McAuliffe defeated four rivals who ran to his left to capture the nomination. Six weeks earlier, Troy Carter, a Louisiana state senator, defeated a left-leaning rival in a special election for a congressional seat.Alvin Bragg led Tali Farhadian Weinstein in the Democratic primary for Manhattan district attorney, though a race call is not expected for days.Dave Sanders for The New York TimesIn New York, the need to count absentee ballots and a new ranked-choice voting system means the Democratic mayoral primary is unlikely to be called until mid-July. But Mr. Adams, a Black retired police captain and Brooklyn’s borough president, captured a strong lead in first-choice votes, winning every borough except Manhattan and showing particular strength in the Bronx and working-class Black neighborhoods in Brooklyn.Mr. Adams built his campaign in opposition to the “defund the police movement,” denouncing his liberal rivals for adopting left-wing slogans that he said threatened the lives of “Black and brown babies” and were being pushed by “a lot of young white affluent people.”“I’m not sure that I would necessarily chose New York City as my bellwether for the country, but there’s no doubt that Adams staked his race on a more moderate position,” said David Axelrod, a former top adviser to President Barack Obama. “There are certainly significant pockets of progressivism in metropolitan areas all over the country; it doesn’t necessarily mean that is the dominant political strain.”As results were tabulated, progressives sought to cast their second-place position as a victory of sorts, one they argued demonstrated their strength in a crowded field.Ms. Wiley, who trails Mr. Adams by about 75,000 votes, urged her supporters to “wait patiently,” arguing that she could pull out an upset victory as the counting continues.In the final weeks of the campaign, she won the backing of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Elizabeth Warren, among other progressive leaders, and liberals largely united behind her candidacy.“Progressives have coalesced around Maya Wiley as a candidate. And it is the coalescing that is the reason there is a progressive candidate in No. 2,” Ms. Wiley said, when asked by reporters to evaluate the performance of left-leaning candidates in the election.Yet some argued that progressives, faced with several candidates competing for the left-wing mantle, had failed to unite early enough around a single candidate. As the campaigns of Scott M. Stringer and Dianne Morales collapsed, the Working Families Party and other left-leaning groups rescinded endorsements and followed Ms. Ocasio-Cortez to rally behind Ms. Wiley as early voting started.“Maya managed to move a lot of voters in a relatively short period of time,” said Sochie Nnaemeka, the New York state director of the Working Families Party. “As we look to the final results in this mayor’s race, I think we feel, overall, there is real progressive ascendancy, and there’s a possibility to continue to elect more candidates with a clear anti-establishment, pro-working people viewpoint.”Some aides and allies of his rivals argue that Mr. Adams evaded the kind of scrutiny that weakened candidates like Mr. Stringer, the city comptroller who stumbled after facing two allegations of sexual misconduct, and Andrew Yang. Others pointed to a deluge of super PAC spending, which largely benefited moderate candidates, including Mr. Adams.But the strong lead Mr. Adams has in the race also renews questions about the progressive movement’s ability to connect with Black and brown voters, particularly older voters who are more conservative on social issues and policing.Mr. Adams’s working-class background enabled him to connect in a way that was more challenging for Ms. Wiley, a former counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio and prominent analyst on MSNBC, some progressive strategists say. Mr. Adams, who barely campaigned in Manhattan, cast himself as a messenger of working-class anger and frustration with the management of the city.Rebecca Katz, a strategist who worked for Mr. Stringer, noted that parts of Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s district had supported Mr. Adams, who takes a far more conservative position on the role of the police than the congresswoman.“Voters are not ideological if you look at how they’re looking at their candidates,” she said. “You can’t look at these results and say it was a referendum on ideology. This is more a story of which candidates are connecting with voters.” More

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      N.Y.C. Mayor’s Race: Could the Top 3 Change Places?

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      [Want to get New York Today by email? Here’s the sign-up.]It’s Thursday. Weather: Mostly sunny, with a high in the upper 70s. Alternate-side parking: In effect until July 4 (Independence Day). James Estrin/The New York Times and Earl Wilson/The New York TimesIt’s almost time for the ranked-choice process to play out.After Primary Day voting for Democratic candidates in the race for mayor, Eric Adams has a roughly nine-point lead over the second-place Maya Wiley, and stands about 12 points ahead of Kathryn Garcia. But with no candidate poised to reach 50 percent of first-place votes, New Yorkers’ ranked selections will come into play.The standings could still change. But overcoming Mr. Adams’s commanding lead would be tough.[Read more from my colleague Andy Newman on how the race could shake out.]Here’s what to know:Ms. Wiley and Ms. Garcia still have a path — a challenging one.If Ms. Wiley makes it to the final round of the ranked-choice playoff process and is ranked ahead of Mr. Adams on about 60 percent of all ballots where neither is ranked first, she could be victorious.Ms. Garcia would need to do the same by a few percentage points more to win.Those scenarios are not especially likely. Mr. Adams’s popularity among voters who did not rank him first would need to be particularly low, and at least one poll before Primary Day suggested that was not the case.Wait, what about the uncounted ballots?Many first-round votes still have not been tallied: in-person votes from about 15 percent of precincts and tens of thousands of absentee ballots.The ballots would need to overwhelmingly favor one contender to swing the election, but could move the candidates closer to or further from one another.A comeback has happened before.Some supporters of Ms. Wiley or Ms. Garcia cite a mayoral contest in Oakland, Calif., to justify optimism.In that city’s 2010 race, Don Perata, the former head of the California State Senate, led his opponent, Jean Quan, by 8.7 percentage points after the first round. But Ms. Quan garnered 68 percent of the votes from ballots that listed neither of the two candidates first.She narrowly won.But Ms. Quan and another progressive candidate, who finished third, had endorsed each other and rallied against ranking Mr. Perata on the ballot. Ms. Garcia and Ms. Wiley did not form an alliance with each other.A successful late surge is rare.In 128 ranked-choice races across the country where there was no first-round winner, a candidate trailing by more than eight points after the first round has only won three times, according to FairVote.No one trailing by 10 points has ever been victorious.More on the race for mayor:How Adams Built a Diverse Coalition That Put Him Ahead in the Mayor’s RaceBrooklyn Councilman Unites Progressives to Lead Comptroller’s Race From The TimesModest Rent Increases Approved for 2.3 Million N.Y.C. TenantsN.Y.C.’s Police Chokehold Ban Is Struck Down by CourtHow India Walton Pulled It Off in the Buffalo Mayoral PrimaryOn the Scene: A Summer Night Down the Shore in JerseyWant more news? Check out our full coverage.The Mini Crossword: Here is today’s puzzle.What we’re readingThe disgraced R&B artist R. Kelly was transferred to a jail in Brooklyn this week ahead of his federal trial in August. [Daily News]The state attorney general’s office will not bring criminal charges against officers in Nassau County who opened fire and killed a 19-year-old in 2020. [QNS]A nearly 900-pound white shark has been spotted off the coast of Long Island and the Jersey Shore over the past several days. [NBC 4 New York]And finally: No more to-go cocktailsMore than a year after Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo imposed it to help quell the coronavirus raging through the state, New York’s state of emergency will end today, the governor said.But the change comes with the loss of one popular pandemic-era practice: the executive order that had allowed bars and restaurants to sell to-go and delivery alcoholic beverages will also end after today, New York State’s Liquor Authority said on Twitter.[Read more from my colleagues Daniel E. Slotnik and Dan Levin on the change.]The state of emergency was declared on March 7, 2020, as New York City became one of the world’s hardest-hit places for Covid-19. Its end is another welcome sign of the state’s steady march back toward normalcy. The governor relaxed most of New York’s remaining virus restrictions last week.But many consumers have grown accustomed to takeout tequila and walkaway wine, and many bars and restaurants have come to rely on the business they generated.Andrew Rigie, the executive director of the New York City Hospitality Alliance, said the announcement came as a shock to some of his members, who thought takeout alcohol would be allowed at least through July 5, when the current rules were set to expire.“It’s a loss of an important revenue stream that’s helping them stay afloat,” Mr. Rigie said.It’s Thursday — pour one out.Metropolitan Diary: Hot pink umbrella Dear Diary:I was returning to work from a coffee run when I got caught in the start of a rainstorm without my umbrella.When I got to the corner at 77th Street and Columbus, I just missed the light to cross. A long line of waiting cars began its procession. I stood there, getting soaked.Then the downpour over me suddenly stopped. I whirled around. An older woman standing beside me had put her hot pink umbrella over the two of us.“I can keep you dry for a little while,” she said.I thanked her, laughing a little.“Was my misery so apparent?”“Your hair was wet.”The light changed, and we crossed the street together under the shelter of her umbrella.“How far do you have to go?” she asked.“Just here,” I said, pointing to the right. “I work at the museum.”She smiled.“Well,” she said, walking off, “have a lovely day!”— Camille JettaNew York Today is published weekdays around 6 a.m. Sign up here to get it by email. You can also find it at nytoday.com. More

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      How Maya Wiley or Kathryn Garcia Could Beat Eric Adams

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      Under ranked-choice voting, it is mathematically possible for the second- and third-place finishers in Tuesday’s Democratic primary to overtake the front-runner — but it will be tough. It was the city’s first mayoral race using ranked-choice voting, and there was no incumbent running.After the first round of vote tallying, a relatively conservative male Democrat with a long history in elected office led the pack by nine percentage points, with two female candidates ranked second and third.In the end, the second-place finisher came from behind to score a narrow victory.It happened in Oakland, Calif., in 2010. Whether it can happen in New York City in 2021 is a question that has taken on great urgency.With partial results in on Wednesday afternoon, Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, has 32 percent of first-place votes. He leads Maya Wiley, a former City Hall counsel, by 9 points, and Kathryn Garcia, a former sanitation commissioner, by 12 points.Because Mr. Adams has almost no chance of garnering more than 50 percent of first-place votes, the ranked-choice playoff process will begin. It is a series of rounds in which the candidate with the fewest first-place votes is eliminated and those votes are transferred to whomever the voter listed in the next slot, until only two candidates remain — at which point the leader wins.Ms. Wiley’s supporters hope that she can close the gap by picking up enough votes from voters who preferred her to Mr. Adams but did not rank her first. Ms. Garcia’s supporters are hoping for something similar.But both candidates face steep challenges to overcoming Mr. Adams’s commanding lead. Here is a brief explainer:Can Wiley or Garcia still win?Mathematically, yes. Ms. Wiley could win if she makes it to the final round and is ranked ahead of Mr. Adams on around 60 percent of all ballots where neither is ranked first. Ms. Garcia’s threshold in the same situation is a few points higher.What’s the likelihood of that?Low. Mr. Adams would have to be enormously unpopular among voters who did not rank him first, and one of the few polls done late in the race showed broader support for him than for Ms. Wiley or Ms. Garcia.The poll of 800 likely Democratic voters, conducted by Citizen Data and FairVote, a national organization that promotes ranked-choice voting, found that Mr. Adams was the only candidate in the race who was a top-three choice of more than half the voters.Kathryn Garcia campaigning on the Upper West Side on Tuesday. She was trailing Eric Adams in first-place votes by 12 points on Wednesday afternoon.Desiree Rios for The New York TimesThe poll tracks fairly closely with the actual first-round results reported so far: It showed Mr. Adams with 32 percent and Ms. Wiley and Ms. Garcia both with 18 percent. It was conducted before the race’s chaotic final weekend, when Mr. Adams was criticized for asserting that Ms. Garcia and Andrew Yang, a former presidential candidate, were trying to weaken Black candidates by campaigning together.That episode may have damaged Mr. Adams and helped Ms. Garcia, but not much, said Rob Richie, FairVote’s president. “My assumption is that the last three days didn’t change the fundamentals enough to actually change the outcome,” he said.To give a sense of Mr. Adams’s strength, in a final-round matchup between Mr. Adams and Ms. Wiley based on the voter rankings in the FairVote poll, Ms. Wiley inherited 47 percent of Ms. Garcia’s first-place voters and Mr. Adams inherited 35 percent, but he still beat her by more than 10 points. In a similar matchup between Mr. Adams and Ms. Garcia, she inherited more than 60 percent of Ms. Wiley’s first-place votes but still lost.Nevertheless, an undaunted Ms. Wiley said on Wednesday that she expected to significantly outpace Mr. Adams in collecting second- and third-choice votes and said she had no plan to concede, “because I’m winning.”How often does a trailing candidate in a ranked-choice election end up winning?Very rarely. In 128 ranked-choice races in the United States since 2004 where there was no first-round winner, there have been only three occasions where someone trailing by more than eight points after the first round ended up the victor, according to FairVote.No one trailing by 10 points has ever won, though in the 2018 San Francisco mayoral race, Mark Leno very nearly came from 12 points down to overtake London Breed. Ms. Breed wound up winning by less than a percentage point.What happened in the 2010 Oakland mayoral race?Don Perata, the former head of the California State Senate, led his more progressive opponents Jean Quan by 8.7 percentage points and Rebecca Kaplan by 12.2 points after the first round. But in the elimination rounds, Ms. Quan ended up with 68 percent of the votes from ballots that listed neither her nor Mr. Perata first, and she narrowly defeated him.There was a big difference, though, between that race and the New York race: Ms. Quan and Ms. Kaplan cross-endorsed each other and co-led an “anybody but Don” attack on Mr. Perata.“It was really cooperative campaigning between two people who were more on the left,” said Jason McDaniel, an associate professor of political science at San Francisco State University. “It was specifically about going against the perceived establishment candidate.”Ms. Garcia and Ms. Wiley formed no such alliance. During the campaign, Ms. Garcia seemed open to coalitions with other candidates and explored the possibility of working with Ms. Wiley, in addition to Mr. Yang.Ms. Wiley said she was invited to campaign with Ms. Garcia and Mr. Yang, but declined because of misgivings about Mr. Yang’s comments at the final debate about people with mental illness.What about the ballots that have yet to be tallied?As of Wednesday afternoon, the in-person votes from about 3 percent of election scanning machines had not been counted yet. Neither had tens of thousands of absentee ballots — a maximum of about 220,000.But they would have to overwhelmingly favor one candidate to swing the election, and unlike last fall’s Trump-Biden contest, there are no signs of that.The absentee ballots are widely thought to favor Ms. Garcia over Ms. Wiley because absentee voters tend to be older and Ms. Garcia had an older base, but only moderately.What about ‘exhausted ballots’?Those are ballots where every candidate ranked by the voter gets eliminated and thus the ballot no longer directly affects the outcome. The more exhausted ballots there are, the harder it is for a second-place candidate to catch the front-runner. In a race like this one, where there were many viable candidates and voters new to the ranked-choice system might be unwilling to rank a full slate, the possibility of exhausted ballots is high.How sure can we be about any of this?We can’t. We don’t know yet where voters ranked anyone other than their first-choice candidate. We don’t know how many ballots are outstanding, let alone how the candidates are ranked on them. That is why the official winner is likely not to be announced until the week of July 12.Anne Barnard, Nate Cohn, Emma G. Fitzsimmons and Charlie Smart contributed reporting. More

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

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

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

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