N.Y.C. Mayoral Race: Live Updates

Two leading mayoral candidates on Monday moved to pre-emptively defend the results of Tuesday’s ranked-choice election, a day after allies of Eric Adams baselessly suggested that the appearance of an alliance between Kathryn Garcia and Andrew Yang amounted to voter suppression, and as Mr. Adams himself continued to criticize the alignment.

“This partnership is not racist and we should not be using this term so loosely against other candidates,” said Maya D. Wiley, a former counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio. “These accusations are a weaponization of real fears and concerns about our democracy, and have no place here.”

Ms. Wiley also warned against making false claims of voter suppression at a time of Republican-led restrictions on voting rights.

“Already, tens of thousands of New Yorkers have voted, and many thousands more will vote tomorrow,” she said. “At a time when this country is seeing real voter suppression laws being enacted, using racism charges to undermine confidence in Ranked Choice Voting is cynical, self-interested and dangerous.”

Ms. Garcia, a former sanitation commissioner, released a campaign memo stressing that it was highly unlikely that a winner would be declared Tuesday — effectively issuing a warning shot against any candidate that would seek to claim victory before ranked-choice tabulations could be run.

New York City voters passed a ballot measure in 2019 to usher in ranked-choice voting, in which voters can rank up to five candidates in order of preference.

Mr. Adams’s allies previously filed a suit to forestall its implementation that failed in court.

In recent days, Ms. Garcia and Mr. Yang, a former presidential candidate, have campaigned together, and they appear on political literature together as well.

While Mr. Yang has made clear that Ms. Garcia is his second choice on the ballot, Ms. Garcia has stressed that she is not making a cross-endorsement, but said openly that she wants Mr. Yang’s second-choice votes.

The appearance of an alliance, though, led some of Mr. Adams’s allies — and Mr. Adams himself — to claim without evidence that Ms. Garcia and Mr. Yang were seeking to prevent a Black or Latino candidate from becoming mayor.

In fact, alliances are common in elections with ranked-choice voting. The Garcia campaign’s statement also stressed data that showed how ranked-choice voting could assist candidates of color and female candidates.

Mr. Adams has led sparse public polling, but the race looks far more fluid in a ranked-choice voting scenario.

Mayor Bill de Blasio, who is thought to favor Mr. Adams, said on Monday that he did not view the alliance between Mr. Yang and Ms. Garcia as voter suppression, but rather an “opportunistic” move by two candidates who did not have much in common.

He said it could take a while to know who won the race and agreed with a journalist that the person who is in first place on primary night might not win in the end. That’s something voters should be prepared for under ranked-choice voting, he noted.

“Every vote has to be counted before there is a final result,” the mayor said.

But Mr. de Blasio also declined to criticize comments by Mr. Adams and his supporters about the alliance being racially motivated. He reiterated that he was not making his rankings for mayor public.

“Let’s be clear,” Ms. Wiley’s statement concluded. “This will be a free and fair election and I urge all New Yorkers to use all five slots on their ballot.”

In a round of early-morning television appearances on Monday, Eric Adams continued to criticize an alliance between two of his rivals as an attempt to prevent the city from electing its second Black mayor.

Andrew Yang joined forces this weekend with Kathryn Garcia, urging voters to rank Ms. Garcia second on their ranked-choice ballots and saying that Mr. Adams should not be mayor. Ms. Garcia did not suggest that her supporters rank Mr. Yang second.

Mr. Adams and some of his supporters have characterized the alliance as an effort to disenfranchise Black voters. On Sunday, Mr. Adams said that for the candidates to unveil their alliance on the new holiday of Juneteenth was disrespectful.

“While we were celebrating liberation and freedom from enslavement, they sent a message and I thought it was the wrong message to send,” Mr. Adams said Sunday.

On CNN’s “New Day” and Fox 5’s “Good Day New York” on Monday, Mr. Adams continued to talk about the joint campaigning as disrespectful to efforts to elect Black and Latino leadership.

“What message were you sending during this time that we’re talking about how do you empower various ethnic groups in politics?” Mr. Adams asked on CNN.

On Fox, Mr. Adams argued that the alliance “feeds into the signals of America.”

“We know America’s dark past,” Mr. Adams said. “Everything from poll taxes to how we stop the vote, what we are seeing across the country.”

Another Black candidate for mayor, Maya Wiley, said that she did not see any problem with the alliance between Mr. Yang and Ms. Garcia, saying that this sort of coordination often happens in ranked-choice elections. “I’m not calling this racism,” she said Monday morning.

Susan Lerner of Common Cause New York, a government watchdog group, rejected Mr. Adams’s remarks, saying there was “nothing insidious or cynical about two candidates transparently using a legitimate strategy in a democratically approved system of election.”

Christina Greer, an associate professor of political science at Fordham University, said that Mr. Adams often says things publicly that some his supporters might only discuss behind closed doors.

“I don’t understand the Adams critique, but he may be critiquing the visual of the Asian and white alliance and asking out loud to voters if this is the dog-whistle coalition we can expect under a Yang or Garcia administration, meaning Blacks and Latinos will be excluded from debates on housing, pay equity and schools,” Ms. Greer said.

“Adams speaks in a frequency that Black people and some working-class white people can hear,” she added.

The New York City primary election is this Tuesday, but it could be weeks before we find out who won the top contest — the Democratic primary for mayor.

Given the electoral makeup of the city, the winner of that contest is highly likely to be elected mayor in November. On Tuesday night, we should find out which candidate is leading among the ballots cast in-person on Primary Day and during nine days of early voting.

But election officials must then wait for tens of thousands of absentee ballots to arrive, and those will need to be counted as well.

And there is a new wrinkle this year that makes the timeline more complicated: The city is using ranked-choice voting for the first time in a mayoral race. Only New Yorkers’ first-choice votes will be counted right away, but their other choices could potentially be decisive.

In other words, we cannot assume that the candidate who is winning after first-choice votes are counted on primary night will end up victorious. Another candidate could win more second- and third-choice votes and overtake that candidate.

That’s why proponents of ranked-choice voting are urging New Yorkers to be patient.

“Democracy takes time, and every vote counts,” said Susan Lerner, the executive director of Common Cause New York, a good government group. “Accurate and fair election results are worth waiting for.”

The most crowded field of Democratic candidates for New York City mayor in recent memory makes a collective sprint to the finish line today, crisscrossing the city in dozens of appearances on the last day before Tuesday’s primary. Beware as you leave the house or turn on the TV or radio: You are liable to encounter someone asking for your vote.

After a closing weekend filled with drama, including a new alliance between two candidates, Andrew Yang and Kathryn Garcia, that was roundly criticized by a third — Eric Adams — the race, which has featured little high-quality polling, is still believed to be tight enough that at least four candidates have a decent chance of winning.

Here are some highlights from the top candidates’ schedules:

• Mr. Adams will take part in a rally against gun violence in Jamaica, Queens, this morning, continuing to hammer away at the crime-fighting theme that has come to define his candidacy. Mr. Adams, the Brooklyn borough president and a retired police captain, will hold a rally with first responders in Prospect-Lefferts Gardens, Brooklyn, in the afternoon and appear live on Time TV in the evening.

• Ms. Garcia, a former sanitation commissioner, will greet voters at the Union Square Greenmarket this morning, appear live on MSNBC at noon and tour small businesses in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, in the afternoon. She will greet Staten Island Ferry passengers in Manhattan in the evening, appear with Mr. Yang in Flushing and Corona, Queens, and then be interviewed on CNN.

• Maya Wiley, a former counsel to the outgoing mayor, Bill de Blasio, will greet voters at Jamaica Center in Queens before speaking live on the Brian Lehrer show on WNYC radio. She will visit a Fairway supermarket on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, then talk to voters in Washington Heights in Manhattan; East Flatbush, Brooklyn; and Starrett City, Brooklyn. She will hold a rally in the evening with three members of Congress and the New York Public Advocate at the Brooklyn Museum.

• Mr. Yang, the former presidential candidate, has morning appearances in Brooklyn and Manhattan, followed by interviews on 1010 WINS radio and on MSNBC. In the afternoon, he will greet voters in Manhattan and the Bronx and stop outside the Mets game at Citi Field. In the evening, he will travel to several neighborhoods in Queens and will be interviewed live on CNN and on Talk Radio 77 WABC.

One T.V. spot hails Eric Adams’s experience as a police officer. Another touts Andrew Yang’s cash relief plans.

With New York City Democrats poised to pick a mayoral candidate on Tuesday who is all but certain to win the general election in November, New Yorkers have been inundated with mailers, and ads on T.V., radio and the internet.

As usual, many of those ads come from the mayoral campaigns themselves. But, in a first for New York City, a substantial amount of that advertising comes from super PACs backing individual candidates.

In 2013, the last time there was an open election for mayor, New York City saw no candidate-specific super PACs. This year, seven of the top eight Democrats running for mayor have them. And much of the funding for those super PACs comes from billionaires.

These barely regulated expenditures threaten to undermine New York City’s campaign finance system, which is designed to fight the power of big money in politics by using city funds to match small donations.

At least 14 individuals identified as billionaires by Forbes magazine have donated to mayoral-related super PACs. Their money has generally gone to the three moderate candidates who talk the most about tamping down on crime and disorder: Mr. Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, Mr. Yang, a former presidential candidate, and Raymond J. McGuire, a former Citigroup executive who trails in the polls.

Together, billionaires have spent more than $16 million this year on super PACs involved in the mayoral race, with half of that benefiting those three candidates.

Overall super PAC spending in the mayor’s race exceeds $24 million, according to the New York City Campaign Finance Board. And three of the top six spenders on television, digital and radio advertising in the mayor’s race are super PACs.

“Now in 2021, New York City has a term-limited Democratic incumbent with no heir apparent, which has led to a wide open mayoral race run with campaigns run by consultants with deep experience using candidate super PACs in federal campaigns,” said John Kaehny, the executive director of Reinvent Albany.

As he hit the campaign trail early on Monday morning, Andrew Yang had a message for the supporters and campaign volunteers helping him greet commuters at the Staten Island ferry terminal.

“We’re going to win New York by hustling,” he said, to claps and laughter.

The hustle was on display on the last full day of campaigning before Election Day. Mr. Yang hopped on the Staten Island Ferry at 7:30 a.m., kicking off a tour he’s making of all five boroughs in the final day of the campaign.

With a few campaign staffers in tow, Mr. Yang — whose energy often seems boundless, even on a barge crossing New York Harbor on a dreary day — handed out leaflets and greeted bleary-eyed voters as they rode the ferry from Manhattan to Staten Island.

As has been his custom, Mr. Yang posed for selfies with those who asked. At the ferry terminal, he jogged alongside commuters rushing to catch the boat to Manhattan.

He also spoke to undecided voters to try and sway them to rank him on their ballots on Tuesday.

Joshua Bryson, 55, said that he had not yet decided who to vote for but that he was considering Mr. Yang.

“I wish I could marry four candidates together and make one super candidate,” Mr. Bryson, of the Upper East Side, said after speaking with Mr. Yang on the ferry. His top choices at the moment were Mr. Yang and Maya D. Wiley.

Mr. Bryson, a lifelong New Yorker, said that he had initially been dissuaded by Mr. Yang’s background. “One thing I worry about with Andrew Yang is that his qualification seems to be, you know, that he’s a rich guy.”

He had also written Mr. Yang off because he thought he had leaned into fear-mongering about crime.

But Mr. Bryson, who said one of his main concerns was limiting the power of real estate developers, said he was still considering a vote for Mr. Yang after speaking with him.

“I’m going to do a little more research, to be fair,” he said.

Adele Mayers was getting on the subway in Queens on Monday on her way to work when she met one of the candidates she was considering ranking first: Kathryn Garcia.

Ms. Mayers, 38, told Ms. Garcia she still had research to do, particularly on the uptick in crime and on education, her top issues. She said she was still considering ranking Andrew Yang No. 1 because she felt he understood the tech industry. And with ranked-choice voting, she felt like no matter what, she wouldn’t be throwing her vote away.

“I didn’t like that it had to be all or nothing,” she said of the old voting system.

With Tuesday’s primary just hours away, Ms. Mayers, who works in a jewelry store, was one of the large pool of undecided voters that candidates like Ms. Garcia were still trying to woo, even if not for a first-place rank.

Ms. Garcia and Mr. Yang have prominently courted each other’s supporters, a move that continued to provoke backlash on Monday from another leading contender, Eric Adams, and from his supporters.

Allies of Mr. Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, have claimed without evidence that the appearance of an alliance between Ms. Garcia and Mr. Yang amounted to an effort to weaken the voices of Black voters — even though alliances between rivals are common in elections with ranked-choice voting.

“If they feel based on their perception that this suppressed the votes, then I respect their feelings,” Mr. Adams said on CNN Monday morning.

Ms. Garcia and Mr. Yang plan to campaign together again on Monday evening, for a third day in a row.

“I have no idea how I could be suppressing votes when I’m asking people to go vote,” Ms. Garcia said. “I don’t understand that message at all.”

She said her goal on Monday was to boost turnout and convince voters that “making government work for everyone is actually progressive.”

Ms. Mayers, who is Black, said that she did not understand the backlash to Ms. Garcia and Mr. Yang campaigning together. “They came up with that, good for them,” she said.

Ms. Mayers also objected to the suggestion from Adams supporters that the strategy was a form of voter suppression.

“No, Black and Hispanic voters are not a monolith,” she said.