How the New York City Mayoral Race Could Shake up Democrats Going into 2022
The New York City Mayoral election is coming up this Tuesday, June 22nd and its winner could take a prominent role in leading the party forward.
As American politics has hit somewhat of a lull at the beginning of the Summer with President Biden participating in the G7 conference in Europe and meanwhile Congress has taken little action to push any bills forward, the New York City Mayoral Race is quickly ending, and its results could have a profound impact on the Democratic party going forward into 2022 and 2024.
During the pandemic throughout the past year, New York City has received a large amount of national media attention with a large focus on the scandals and antics of both Mayor Bill De Blasio and New York state governor Andrew Cuomo. New York City has also been a center for progressive ideas both coming from the mayor’s office and from activists during and following social justice protests last Summer. This has had real ramifications in the recent elections of Ritchie Torres and Jamaal Bowman join Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in a group of New York City Progressives who have been successful in defeating long time Democratic incumbents.
While these congressional representatives are trying to push the envelope on policy ideas in Washington, the Mayor of New York City has historically been a much more moderate position, with recent mayors of Michael Bloomberg and Rudy Giuliani who each served multiple terms of office as Republicans (Bloomberg later became and Independent and then Democrat leading into the 2020 presidential primary). In many ways, this years New York City Mayoral primary has come to been as a litmus test for many progressive politicians and their policy proposals, especially regarding police and education reforms, both areas which have seen constant suffering throughout the past year and a half. The winner of this race could see their platform receiving a large mandate from the people of New York City and by proxy a representation of the state of the Democratic party at large.
Leading the pack of mayoral candidates is current Brooklyn Borough president and former NYPD Captain Eric Adams. Adams has largely been seen as a moderate figure within the race, vehemently opposing many progressive pushes such as “defund the police”, as well as being the key recipient of attacks from progressive activists. Second to Adams is former New York City sanitation commissioner Kathryn Garcia followed by MSNBC analyst and former attorney for Mayor Bill de Blasio, Maya Wiley who has emerged as the leading progressive in the race after receiving key endorsements from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other leading progressives around the city. While many progressives initially put their support behind now falling candidates Scott Stringer and Diane Morales, each candidate incurred serious scandals in their campaigns causing them to lose large amounts of support to Garcia and Wiley with multiple sexual assault allegations coming out against Stringer and Morales refusing to cooperate with a union of her own staffers.
Currently fourth in the race is once frontrunner and former presidential nominee Andrew Yang. While Yang’s previous national attention and promise for a new kind of politics for New York initially resonated with voters, in the past weeks he has slowly fallen from grace as his lack of experience in the city has clearly caught up with him. Currently polls of the race list Adams as first with 28% of first choice voters, Garcia second at 19%, Wiley third at 17%, and Yang fifth at 15%, with the rest of the field all below 8% of first choice votes. With the election being ranked choice voting, voters will be able to list their choice of candidates with an instant runoff system determining the winner, which as of now by polling is Eric Adams defeating Kathryn Garcia 56% to 44% in the final round of votes.
While Adams has a clear lead, the race is still very much a tossup, especially with the ranked choice voting system allowing many progressive candidates to throw their support behind other leading figures in the days leading up to the election. The ultimate winner of the race will likely see a large mandate from the people of New York City for a very different type of governance, something that in many ways could reflect voters around the country and play a central role in the strategy of Democrats leading into the 2022 elections. If Eric Adams can win on a moderate, reform platform, it would be a clear rebuke of many progressives polices that have seen large amounts of attention throughout the past year, prompting many Democrats to think twice about moving further to the left as they plan for 2022. However, if a more progressive candidate, Garcia or especially Wiley can pull out a win, it would provide a strong endorsement for their vision for the future giving the progressive wing of the party new proof going into 2022 and perhaps giving a stronger push for more primary challenges of longtime incumbent Democrats in safe districts.
Regardless of the outcome of the election and your personal political priorities, seeing who the people of New York endorse to be Mayor of the largest and most powerful city in the country for the next four years will have a profound impact on our current political moment and could potentially completely change the direction of the Democratic party going forward.