Brooklyn Borough Pres. Eric Adams, a former New York Police Department captain, won New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary, according to the Associated Press.
Adams is poised to become New York’s second Black mayor if elected in November’s general election over Republican nominee and radio host Curtis Sliwa as winning the primary in the heavily Democratic city is tantamount to winning the race.
The city’s Board of Elections released the second batch of data during their initial ranked-choice vote, which showed Adams leading Kathryn Garcia, the city’s former sanitation chief, by 8,426 votes — 50.5 percent to 49.5 percent, respectively.
The numbers released on Tuesday included a chunk of the over 120,000 outstanding absentee ballots. There are still 81,855 Democratic absentee ballots outstanding as of July 2, according to the BOE.During the campaign, he opposed the defund the police movement in a crowded field of candidates that included several progressives pushing to reallocate funds from the NYPD to social service programs.
Voting ended on June 22, but final numbers are not expected until next week — absentee voters whose ballots have been challenged or were tentatively disqualified because of technical or clerical errors still have until Friday to correct, or “cure,” them.
Adams had a strong lead in the initial in-person voting results, with 31.7 percent of the first-preference votes compared to former NYC mayoral counsel Maya Wiley’s 22.3 percent of the vote and former Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia’s 19.5 percent. The latest numbers released are not official, but show Wiley as having been eliminated.
The Adams’ lead was chopped down significantlylast week after successive rounds of ranked-choice voting numbers were factored in. It was the city’s first foray into using ranked-choice voting, which allowed voters to rank up to five candidates by preference.
Those numbers had Adams leading Garcia close to 51-49, ahead by under 15,000 votes.
The shifting numbers came after an embarrassing flub by the city board of elections, where they released voting information that included 135,000 test ballots.
“The Board apologizes for the error and has taken immediate to [sic] ensure the most accurate up to date results are reported,” it said in a statement after the foul-up.
The Adams, Garcia and Wiley campaigns have all filed legal actions seeking the right to review the ranked-choice vote tally. Any manual recount would be expected to last weeks.
The winner in the heavily Democratic city will face Republican nominee and radio host Curtis Sliwa in the general election in November.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
