New York City’s notoriously incompetent election officials have not finished tabulating the votes in the June 22 Democratic primary, with its novel ranked-choice voting system. But the first choices of voters, minus some 124,000 absentees, nevertheless reveal some important things about the differences between different segments of the Democratic coalition in America’s largest city.
These initial results were a clear repudiation of the term-limited left-wing Mayor Bill de Blasio. Coming in first was Brooklyn borough president and former NYPD cop Eric Adams with 32%, well ahead of top de Blasio aide Maya Wiley, with 22%. Third was Kathryn Garcia, de Blasio’s technocratic sanitation commissioner, with 19%. Adams decried and Wiley defended de Blasio’s de-policing policies, while Garcia gingerly opposed “defunding” the police. So did 2020 presidential candidate Andrew Yang, who finished fourth with 12%.
