Eric Adams wins Democratic primary in NYC's mayoral race
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
NEW YORK (AP) — Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams has won the Democratic primary for mayor of New York City after appealing to the political center and promising to strike the right balance between fighting crime and ending racial injustice in policing.
A former police captain, Adams would be the city's second Black mayor if elected.
He triumphed over a large Democratic field in New York's first major race to use ranked choice voting. Results from the latest tabulations released Tuesday showed him leading former city sanitation commissioner Kathryn Garcia by 8,426 votes, or a little more than 1 percentage point.
"While there are still some very small amounts of votes to be counted, the results are clear: an historic, diverse, five-borough coalition led by working-class New Yorkers has led us to victory in the Democratic primary for mayor of New York," Adams said in a statement.
He said he was running to "deliver on the promise of this great city for those who are struggling, who are underserved, and who are committed to a safe, fair, affordable future for all New Yorkers."
Adams will be the prohibitive favorite in the general election against Curtis Sliwa, the Republican founder of the Guardian Angels. Democrats outnumber Republicans 7-to-1 in New York City.
Adams' closest vanquished Democratic rivals included Garcia, who campaigned as a technocrat and proven problem-solver, and former City Hall legal advisor Maya Wiley, who had progressive support including an endorsement from U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Andrew Yang, the 2020 presidential candidate known for his proposed universal basic income, was an early favorite but faded in the race.
Voting in the primary ended June 22. Early returns showed Adams in the lead, but New Yorkers had to wait for tens of thousands of absentee ballots to be counted and for rounds of tabulations done under the new ranked choice system.
Under the system, voters ranked up to five candidates for mayor in order of preference. Candidates with too few votes to win were eliminated and ballots cast for them redistributed to the surviving contenders, based on the voter preference, until only two were left.
The city's first experience with the system in a major election was bumpy. As votes were being tallied on June 29, elections officials bungled the count by inadvertently including 135,000 old test ballots. Erroneous vote tallies were posted for several hours before officials acknowledged the error and took them down.
The mistake had no impact on the final outcome of the race.
Adams, Garcia and Wiley all filed lawsuits last week seeking the right to review the ranked choice tally.
Wiley said in a statement Tuesday that the board "must be completely remade following what can only be described as a debacle." As for herself, she said her campaign would have more to say soon about "next steps."
Garcia's campaign issued no immediate response to Tuesday's vote tally, but said she would be making a statement Wednesday morning.
Adams, 60, is a moderate Democrat who opposed the "defund the police" movement.
"We're not going to recover as a city if we turn back time and see an increase in violence, particularly gun violence," Adams said after three people including a 4-year-old girl were shot and wounded in Times Square in May.
"If Black lives really matter, it can't only be against police abuse. It has to be against the violence that's ripping apart our communities," he told supporters the night of the primary.
But Adams is a study in contradictions who at different times has been a defender of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, a registered Republican and a Democratic state senator thriving in a world of backroom deals.
Adams speaks frequently of his dual identity as a 22-year police veteran and a Black man who endured police brutality himself as a teenager. He said he was beaten by officers at age 15.
Adams became a police officer in 1984 and rose to the rank of captain before leaving to run for the state Senate in 2006.
While in the police department, he co-founded 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care, a group that campaigned for criminal justice reform and against racial profiling.
After winning a state Senate seat from Brooklyn in 2006, Adams made an impression with an impassioned speech favoring same-sex marriage rights in 2009, two years before New York's state legislators passed a marriage equality bill.
Adams also weathered a few controversies, including a 2010 report from the state inspector general that faulted his oversight of the bidding process to bring casino gambling to the Aqueduct Racetrack in Queens. Adams had accepted campaign contributions from a politically connected group bidding for the gambling franchise.
Adams was elected in 2013 as Brooklyn borough president, his current job.
Adams is a vegan who credits a plant-based diet with reversing his diabetes. He has a 25-year-old son, Jordan Coleman, with a former girlfriend. His current partner is Tracey Collins, an educator who holds an administrative job in the city's public school system.
Journalists raised questions during the race about where Adams lived. He was born in Brooklyn, walked the beat there as a cop, owns real estate there and represented it in the state Senate. But he slept in his office in Brooklyn Borough Hall for months during the pandemic and opponents noted that he shares a place with his partner in Fort Lee, New Jersey.
Adams gave reporters a tour of a basement apartment in Brooklyn that he said was his primary residence.
Adams can be a charismatic speaker but has also made cringe-worthy utterances, such as his 1993 suggestion that Herman Badillo, a Puerto Rican-born politician, should have married a Latina instead of a white, Jewish woman.
Speaking at a Martin Luther King Jr. Day event last year, Adams complained about gentrifiers moving to the city from elsewhere.
"Go back to Iowa. You go back to Ohio," Adams said. "New York City belongs to the people that were here and made New York City what it is."
Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat, was barred by the city charter from seeking a third term.
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New Yorkers can now breathe a sigh of relief. It will be Adams vs Sliwa and whoever wins will have a very tough job in bringing the city back to anything close to what it was a decade ago. Adams had to make a deal with the devil in the end, so I'm hoping for a longshot in Sliwa.
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Personally, I am glad that Adam's won the Dem nomination. He even has the endorsement of the police union, which says a lot.
The city was not in bad shape, despite DeBlasio, until the pandemic. Low crime and business was doing fine. I'm hopeful that Adams will get things back to where we were pre-pandemic. Already, the city is doing much better but has a way to go.
I know you love the city, but it's worse than it ever was.
No, it's not.
Gotta disagree with you there Vic. You forget what it was like before Rudy cleaned it up.
Sure Vic
Year's 1,700 Homicides Break a Record - The New York Times
Dec 26, 1979 · NYC police reports record 1,700 homicides so far in '79, exceeding previous record of 1,691 in '72; total is increase of more than 15% over '78; chart (M) Sections SEARCH
How many eons ago was that? Look at that idiot now! A trumpturd flunky with a suspended law license.
John, we are talking about a staggering instant increase:
"New York City in 2020 experienced an unprecedented one-year increase in homicides and shootings. Through December 27, 2020, the number of murders was up 41 percent from 2019 and 53 percent from 2018. Shooting victims were up 103 percent from 2019 and 109 percent from 2018; shooting incidents rose 97 percent and 104 percent. In gang-ridden precincts, the spike was even more startling. In Brooklyn’s Brownsville and Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhoods, there were 170 percent more shooting victims in 2020 than in 2019 and 151 percent more shooting incidents. Murder was up 94 percent in these parts of Brooklyn.
It wasn’t just gang areas that were afflicted. On December 29, a roving pack of young bicyclists in midtown Manhattan attacked a BMW, smashing a bike on top of the car and jumping on its windshield. The same group went after a cab minutes later. Office workers in the area have been chased by similar flash mobs.
The 2020 increase is actually worse than the annual numbers suggest. Street crime dropped from March 2020 to late May 2020, due to the coronavirus lockdown. The 2020 increase incorporates that early crime drop. Measured from June to the end of 2020, the rise in violence would be even more extreme. And it has continued into 2021. Shootings citywide were up 20 percent through February 14, 2021, compared with the first six weeks of 2020."
This time the crime wave was fueled by progressive policies.
There were 462 murders in NYC in 2020. That is roughly one fourth of what the total was in 1979. I would bet the rates for other crimes are similar.
You said it is the worst ever. Its not the worst ever, and I doubt if it is even close to the worst ever.
What happened in 79 was part of the 70's in NYC. What is happening now is self created by a radical mayor.
Its not the worst ever, and I doubt if it is even close to the worst ever.
Not interested in numbers, John. It is much worse. The police are demoralized. Let's see NYC dig out of this one.
Illogical garbage is really becoming a problem on this forum.
We tolerated it for 4 years!
Yes, you did during the trumpturd criminal enterprise 'administration.
I'm hoping that either of these candidates is up to the task. New York was the greatest of modern cities.
Right now the "Big Apple" is celebrating First Responders.
I can't blame anyone for loving that city.