Eric Adams leads in New York mayor’s race; challengers plead for patience as votes are ranked - The Washington Post

With nearly 800,000 Democratic votes counted by midday Wednesday, Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams maintained a comfortable lead in the city’s inaugural ranked-choice election, with nearly 32 percent of first-choice votes for the nomination.

But as the tally continued Wednesday, the candidates in second and third — civil rights attorney Maya Wiley and former city sanitation commissioner Kathryn Garcia — asked a place famous for its high-octane politics to exercise patience.

Wiley, who had about 22 percent of first-choice votes Wednesday, asked residents to “wait patiently.” Garcia, who trailed Adams and Wiley at 19.5 percent, was the final candidate with a path to victory after the first round of counting.

Full results of the New York City election.

For one, he said, Wiley and Garcia have some overlapping constituencies and a large number of either candidate’s voters may have picked the other as their second choice.

If Wiley or Garcia is to overtake him, they will need help from the large number of outstanding absentee ballots.

According to the New York City Board of Elections, more than 100,000 absentee ballots had been submitted but not yet counted, and as many as 107,549 could still be returned — as long as they are postmarked by June 22 and arrive by June 29.

McElwee said Wiley and Garcia need those absentee votes to be “traditional absentees,” from voters who are “a little older, more educated, more Manhattan than average.”.

John Mollenkopf, director of the Center for Urban Research at the City University of New York Graduate Center, said that as votes are reallocated, he expects Adams to draw closer to 50 percent, “but whether he makes it there or not is unclear.”.

If not, he said, Wiley or Garcia may be able to make up ground quickly.

Adams’s standing in the outer boroughs showed that he “put together a Black-Latino coalition pretty successfully.” But, Mollenkopf said, he may need to get votes beyond that base to win.

Wiley, the only leading candidate arguing for cuts to the New York Police Department’s budget, appeared to outperform public opinion polls, which Mollenkopf said would not have happened had crime and policing been a “decisive wedge issue.”.