From left: Andrew Yang, Kathryn Garcia, Eric Adams and Maya Wiley.Photo: Michael M. Santiago/Getty; Roy Rochlin/Getty; Lev Radin/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty; Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty
The polls have closed in Tuesday’s contentious Democratic primary in the New York City mayoral race - and even as the unofficial early resultsled to a shakeup in the race, the final results may not be known for weeks.
That’s in large part because the city used ranked-choice voting for the first time ever with this month’s primary election, which had voters rank their top five mayoral candidates, out of a field of 13, in order of preference.
The process will repeat, with the lowest-ranking candidates being progressively elminiated, until one candidate receives more than 50 percent of the votes.
Polling had appeared uncertain in the weeks running up to the all-important Democratic primary, which will likely determine the Democratic-leaning city’s next mayor come the November general election.
PEOPLE recently profiled each of the top four candidates:Eric Adams,Kathryn Garcia,Andrew YangandMaya Wiley.
Adams was leading, with Wiley and Garcia behind.
New York City mayoral primary.Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty
In the final weeks, Garcia, the city’s 51-year-old former sanitation commissioner, appeared to be challenging Adams, the 60-year-old Brooklyn Borough president, for the primary’s top spot along with Wiley, 57, a prominent civil rights attorney and, like Garcia, a former staffer in the de Blasio administration.
Yang and Garcia had, unusually, campaigned together in the final days of the election, asking voters to rank them No. 1 and No. 2 on their ballots. That led to Adams accusing his opponents of trying to stop him from becoming elected because he is Black.
“For them to come together like they are doing in the last three days, they’re saying we can’t trust a person of color to be the mayor of the City of New York when this city is overwhelmingly people of color,” Adams said, according to theTimes.
TheTimesreportsthat the biggest issue voters cared about in this month’s election was public safety - something Adams, a former police officer, spotlighted.
But learning who voters wound up choosing may take up to three weeks, according to theTimes. The newspaper reports that the winner of Tuesday’s primary election may not be clear until the week of July 12.
“The one thing that New Yorkers don’t have is patience,” Garcia told PEOPLE recently, warning, “The counting of this is going to take a little bit of time.”
The winner of Tuesday’s primary will become the Democratic nominee for mayor in the November election.
source: people.com
