YANG & GARCIA FORM ALLIANCE
They can’t BOTH be mayor, but...
Mayoral candidates Andrew Yang and Kathryn Garcia linked up on the campaign trail Saturday in an unusual move to encourage one another’s supporters to give the other candidate their No. 2 vote.
“You don’t have to pick between Andrew Yang or Kathryn Garcia,” Garcia said at a joint Queens appearance. “You can vote for both of us.”
The duo took Garcia’s campaign van together to the East Village.
“If you support me, please make sure to also support Kathryn Garcia on your ballot,” Yang said. “She’s an outstanding public servant.”
The pair planned to barnstorm across the city as they seek out voters in each other’s strongholds.
The two candidates’ unusual alliance comes just days before the Democratic primary on Tuesday. The mayoral race is the first major election in the city to be held using ranked-choice voting, in which voters can rank up to five preferred candidates.
The latest polls show both Garcia, the former city sanitation commissioner, and Yang, a businessman who ran for president in 2020, trailing behind frontrunners Eric Adams and Maya Wiley. Comptroller Scott Stringer and several other candidates lag further behind.
All surveys show a big chunk of New Yorkers remain undecided.
Yang and Garcia denied that their pact amounts to a cross-endorsement. In an odd twist, Yang urged his voters to rank Garcia No. 2 while Garcia merely asked her backers to include Yang on their ballots.
“In ranked-choice voting, it might not always be a lovefest, but it certainly doesn’t have to be a slugfest,” Garcia said.
Adams on Saturday lashed out at Garcia over the new alliance as a “backroom deal” and noted that she once complained Yang treated her in a sexist manner.
“We just found out who Kathryn Garcia is — she’s as big a fraud as Andrew Yang,” said Adams, the Brooklyn borough president. “She’s making a backroom deal to drown out Black and Brown voices in this election.”
Yang hit back at that comment, noting that, “I’ve been Asian my entire life.”
Wiley told reporters that Yang asked if she would campaign with him and she refused.
Given that no candidate has broken away from the pack, it’s likely that New Yorkers will have to wait until next month to find out who won.
Mail-in ballots can be received as late as a week after the June 22 Primary Day, and the No. 2 through No. 5 choices won’t be tallied until all the first-place ballots are counted.