NEW YORK CITY (CN) — Eric Adams will represent the Democratic Party in the race to become New York City’s next mayor, winning the primary election two weeks after voters hit the polls.
Adams, the Brooklyn borough president and a former police captain, beat former sanitation commissioner Kathryn Garcia by just over 1% of votes — a difference of 8,426, after eight rounds of ranked choice voting, which was used for the first time in the Big Apple’s mayoral primary.
The new voting scheme, as well as recent laws concerning absentee ballots, accounted for the lag between in-person voting on June 22 and the final results, announced Tuesday.
“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 City,” Adams, 60, said in a prepared statement.
“Now we must focus on winning in November so that we can 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.”
If elected, Adams will be New York City’s second Black mayor.
He will face Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa, founder of the Guardian Angels, in the general election.
Sliwa, who has vowed to “refund the police” and eliminate animal kill shelters, is seen as a long-shot candidate, given the city’s strongly Democratic makeup. Compared to the Democratic race, the Republican contest was a clear win for Sliwa, who took more than 68% of the GOP vote.
Following behind Adams and Garcia, in third place, was Maya Wiley, who became the favorite progressive candidate late in the campaign.
George Fontas, political analyst and founder of Fontas Advisors, said that Adams was just the type of candidate his team predicted to prevail: a pragmatic, moderate Democrat who had significant governing experience and a “roll-up-your-sleeves attitude.”
“Eric has really embodied that description to a T over the last six months,” Fontas told Courthouse News on primary day.
At the start of the campaign, the central issue at hand was the Covid-19 pandemic, Fontas noted. As vaccine distribution widened and case numbers dropped, talk turned to policing.
Debate questions centered on whether to defund police budgets or increase officers’ presence on streets and subways.
Adams “met the campaign at the end,” Fontas said. “He was waiting there on the police and public safety issue,” and the campaign eventually made its way there, too.
Saying his understanding of the police force will help him reform it, Adams has cited his two decades of experience as an NYPD officer, during which he co-founded a police reform group called 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care. He has also spoken about being a victim of police brutality as a teenager.
“There are people who discovered police reform this year,” Adams said in an interview with The New York Post.
“My role now, in running for mayor, is not to tell my story — but to reintroduce people to my story. Remember, some of the activists today were 1 or 2 years old when I was doing this. I have a 35-year record of fighting for safety and reform.”
However, Adams’ support for stop-and-frisk policies, opposition to defunding the police, and calls for more cops in the subway are in contrast to progressive candidates calling for an overhaul of policing in the city.
Taking an early lead based on in-person, first choice votes only, Adams held onto first place — albeit by a shrinking margin — when the city’s Board of Elections released an updated tally last week.
The first ranked choice analysis was recalled after elections officials announced that they had mistakenly included 135,000 dummy votes, left over from a test run, skewing the results. Revised results published the next day showed little change in overall candidate placement.
Board officials stressed that the issue was due to human error, and not the ranked choice voting system or technology.
In addition to ranked choice voting, new election laws that allow voters to “cure” absentee ballots complicated the process this year. Officials are required to notify voters who forgot to sign their ballot, or mixed up their return envelope, and give them time to fix the error.
Still, as of Tuesday, around 3,600 votes were uncounted — a figure smaller than the margin between Adams and runner-up Garcia.
Opting not to give a statement on Tuesday, Garcia's campaign said the second-place candidate will hold a press conference Wednesday.
Follow Nina Pullano on Twitter.
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