Eric Adams declared victory in the city’s Democratic mayoral race Tuesday after holding on to a razor-thin lead in a pivotal ballot update, putting him on track to become just the second Black mayor in Big Apple history after running a centrist campaign focused on fighting crime and appealing to blue-collar voters.
Adams, Brooklyn’s current borough president and a retired NYPD captain, led former sanitation commissioner Kathryn Garcia by just 8,426 ballots — or 1% of the total — after more than 120,000 absentee votes were added to the Board of Elections’ unofficial tally of ranked-choice results.
The Associated Press called the race for Adams after the absentee ballot drop, and the 60-year-old Brooklyn BP took his long-awaited victory lap shortly thereafter.
“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 said in a 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 the results hold, Adams will face long-shot Republican mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa in the November general election. That race is widely expected to be a one-sided affair in deep-blue New York.
When only in-person ballots were in the mix last week, Adams held a 14,755-vote lead over Garcia, meaning the ex-sanitation commissioner gained significant ground in the absentees.
However, the Board of Elections said earlier Tuesday that less than 4,000 absentee ballots remain outstanding due to errors that voters are allowed to fix, or “cure,” by Friday if they wish to have them counted.
It’s unclear if there are any additional remaining affidavit ballots — the type of in-person votes cast provisionally due to registration issues — though Adams’ lead appeared sizable enough to hold based on the updated results.
Maya Wiley, Mayor Bill de Blasio’s former counsel and the only other viable contender left in the race ahead of Tuesday, was eliminated in the last ranked-choice round after trailing Garcia by 12,367 ballots.
The Board of Elections — which is still reeling from accidentally including 135,000 “test” ballots in a since-scrapped mayoral race tally last week — didn’t drop the absentee results without a slight hiccup.
After first promising in a tweet to release the results around “brunch” time, the board didn’t unveil them until just before 7 p.m., sparking a fresh round of sardonic jokes on social media about the dysfunctionality of the error-prone board.
During a regularly-held Tuesday afternoon meeting before the absentee dump, the board’s commissioners reiterated apologies for the test ballot bungle.
But Michael Michel, one of the board’s Republican members, also offered praise for BOE staff for carrying out what marked the first ranked-choice election in New York City history.
“All the things that happened with this new system, which has never been pulled off in a city as large as New York, and so your staff and everybody should be congratulated,” Michel said. “I’ll probably get beat up for saying that.”
The test ballot fiasco has prompted renewed calls for BOE reform, with state legislators in Albany already pushing bills that would overhaul the makeup of the board.
The mistake had no impact on the final outcome of the race.
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