New York mayoral campaign heats up
Democratic primary looms on June 22 with Yang narrowly leading
With less than six weeks to go, the Democratic primary that may decide the next mayor of New York City has reached a new stage of unpredictability.
Former presidential candidate Andrew Yang is clinging to front-runner status while city Comptroller Scott Stringer fights off a sexual misconduct allegation.
Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, a former police officer and founder of a law enforcement reform group, has seen his standing rise amid concern over a spike in shootings during the coronavirus pandemic — including gunfire that injured three bystanders in Times Square.
And The New York Times has given its coveted endorsement to a candidate who has been polling in the mid-single digits: Kathryn Garcia, a former city sanitation commissioner and veteran of several other city departments.
The race to succeed the termlimited Mayor Bill de Blasio, also a Democrat, chugged along for months with many New Yorkers too consumed by the coronavirus pandemic and the 2020 presidential election to notice.
But it is grabbing more attention now, with the June 22 Democratic primary looming, television advertisements starting to air and candidates increasingly meeting voters in person after a year of campaigning online because of the pandemic.
Eight top-tier candidates, of the more than two dozen who entered the race, were set to participate in their first televised debate Thursday.
In addition to Yang, Adams, Stringer and Garcia, they are civil rights attorney Maya Wiley, former Citigroup executive Ray Mcguire, former Obama housing secretary Shaun Donovan and former nonprofit executive Dianne Morales.
Adding to the complexity, the primary will be New York City’s first mayoral race to be determined by ranked-choice voting, a system that lets voters pick up to five candidates and rank them in order of preference.
Under the system, a candidate who trails in an initial round of vote tallying could still win the race, if enough people selected them as their second choice.
Yang has narrowly led in most polls, lifted by supporters who like his proposal for a universal basic income, but has been criticized by the left.
U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasiocortez slammed him this week over a tweet in which he said he was “standing with the people of Israel who are coming under bombardment attacks” from the militant group Hamas, but didn’t mention Palestinian victims of retaliatory Israeli strikes.
Adams, 60, has trailed Yang in most voter surveys, but two polls released in the past 10 days have shown Adams slightly ahead.
Adams is campaigning as both a tough-talking former police detective and a Black man who was himself victimized by police brutality as a youth and later founded the reform group 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement.