Rancor Between Adams and Yang Marks End of Bruising Mayoral Campaign

On the final full day of New York City’s mayoral primary campaign, the leading Democratic candidate, Eric Adams, called a top rival a “liar” and a “fraud.”

Only moments earlier, that rival, Andrew Yang, had suggested that Mr. Adams “cuts corners and breaks rules,” and that if Mr. Adams was to become mayor, his administration “would be mired in dysfunction and questions and investigation almost from Day 1.”

New York’s most important mayor’s race in a generation, whose victor will be charged with reviving a city broken by the pandemic, is ending on an ugly note. On the eve of Tuesday’s primary, the contest devolved into a rancorous spat between two of the race’s leading candidates and prompted fresh, if unwarranted, criticism of the city’s implementation of ranked-choice voting.

At issue for Mr. Adams was a late alliance between Mr. Yang, a former presidential candidate, and Kathryn Garcia, the former sanitation commissioner; Mr. Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, continued to suggest, without evidence, that Ms. Garcia and Mr. Yang were conspiring to suppress the Black vote.

The accusation runs counter to the goal of ranked-choice voting, a system that allows voters to rank up to five candidates in order of preference. Proponents say it generally induces better behavior by forcing candidates to court their opponents’ bases, in pursuit of a second- or third-place ranking.

It is supposed to foster friendly alliances, and to a limited extent in this mayor’s race, it has: Mr. Yang and Ms. Garcia have been campaigning together in the final days.

But ranked-choice voting appears to be no match for the typically nasty tenor of New York politics.

“Ranked-choice voting isn’t a cure-all,” said Susan Lerner, the executive director of Common Cause New York, and a proponent of the new system. “Humans are going to be humans.”

The rancor rose with the sun on the morning of what would become another unusually unpleasant June day.

At 7 a.m. Monday, Mr. Adams appeared on CNN, one of a series of national cable television appearances for the mayoral candidates on Monday. He spoke about the recent stabbing of a campaign volunteer in the South Bronx, and mentioned his visit to the family of two children who were nearly killed on a Bronx sidewalk, when they got caught between a shooter and his intended target.

The anecdote highlighted the central theme of his campaign — that crime is rising and only he, a former police captain and police reformer, is equipped to tackle it without violating New Yorkers’ civil rights.

But soon, the conversation turned to Mr. Adams’s other topic of choice: Mr. Yang and Ms. Garcia.

The prior morning, Mr. Adams’s campaign had released a series of quotes from allies arguing that the decision by Ms. Garcia and Mr. Yang to campaign together was an effort to suppress the Black and Latino vote.

The news release called the alliance a “back-room deal” to block Mr. Adams’s path to City Hall, even though it is playing out in public.

Ashley Sharpton, the daughter of the Rev. Al Sharpton and an Adams supporter, called the alliance “a cynical attempt by Garcia and Yang to disenfranchise Black voters.”

“We didn’t march in the streets all summer last year and organize for generations just so that some rich businessman and bureaucrat who don’t relate to the masses can steal the election from us,” she said. “Disgusting.”

Asked about those comments, Mr. Adams told CNN that those were merely his allies’ words. In the next breath, he suggested they were his own.

“I can say this, that African Americans are very clear on voter suppression,” Mr. Adams said. “We know about a poll tax.”

Mr. Adams’s tack seemed designed to capitalize on an idea he has long articulated: That voters do not truly understand how ranked-choice voting works.

His remarks sparked condemnation from across the Democratic Party.

“It is disingenuous and dangerous to play on the very real and legitimate fears of bigotry and voter disenfranchisement by pretending it’s present where it’s not,” said Jumaane Williams, the New York City public advocate, who is Black and backing Maya Wiley’s campaign. “Unfortunately, these tactics are too often effective.”

Mr. Yang condemned Mr. Adams’s remarks, as did Ms. Wiley, who is Black and the leading candidate on the left; she issued a fiery statement that condemned Mr. Adams’s comments, without naming him.

“These accusations are a weaponization of real fears and concerns about our democracy, and have no place here,” she said.

Mr. Adams’s remarks even earned him a rebuke from the chair of the Elections Committee in the New York State Senate, Zellnor Myrie, who is Black and has not endorsed a candidate in the mayor’s race.

“I think about voter suppression more than the average politician,” he wrote on Twitter. “To call RCV voter suppression, or compare it to a poll tax, is **incredibly** wrong and dangerous. Stop it.”

Later in the day, when a reporter asked Mr. Adams if he could assure voters that he would not emulate the former President Donald J. Trump and claim the election was stolen, Mr. Adams’s response was equivocal.

“I assure voters that no one is going to steal the election from me,” he said.

Mr. Yang’s advisers were hopeful that Mr. Adams’s outbursts, while designed to rally his own supporters, might stoke doubts among some moderate voters who were considering ranking Mr. Adams.

A spokesman for Mr. Adams had no comment on that school of thought.

The rest of the last campaign day before the primary played out in the shadow of the Adams-Yang dispute. The tone outside of the firing zone was substantially more lighthearted, as the candidates dashed through the five boroughs in one last-gasp attempt to win voters’ allegiance.

They glad-handed at subway stations and rallied with supporters, and Mr. Yang zipped around the five boroughs in a van emblazoned with his face that his campaign dubbed the Yangatron — a nod to an interview comment where Mr. Yang said his favorite past New York City mayor would be a “Voltron”-like amalgamation.

On Monday morning, Ms. Wiley returned to the vote-rich Upper West Side of Manhattan to campaign outside of Fairway Market on Broadway, a popular stomping ground for candidates.

“All the best to you, queen,” one woman shouted as she walked past.

Reporting was contributed by Emma G. Fitzsimmons, Katie Glueck, Michael Gold, Jeffery C. Mays, Ashley Wong and Mihir Zaveri.