Maya Wiley casts her vote in Brooklyn, with a ballot hiccup
Mayoral candidate Maya Wiley, who has consolidated progressive support in the final hours of the Democratic primary, stopped at a polling site in Flatbush, Brooklyn, on Monday morning to cast her ballot.
Wiley, a former counsel to Mayor de Blasio, became the third major candidate in the Democratic race to vote early. She described the moment as “extremely emotional” and called on voters across the city to turn out.
“I hope every single New Yorker comes out to make their voices heard,” she told reporters outside the castle-like Erasmus Hall High School building. “And while I do ask to be every single New Yorker’s first choice on this ballot, I want every single New Yorker’s voice to count.”
Wiley urged voters to complete their whole ballots and to take advantage of the city’s new ranked-choice system.
But in a hint of the complexity of the new method, she required a mulligan after making a mistake while bubbling her ballot. She picked up a fresh voting sheet in the building’s mostly empty gym and went in for a second try.
“You have to line up the names to the numbers,” she said. “So you just have to be careful.”
She joined her longtime partner, Harlan Mandel, at the polling site, where she said his father went to school. Wiley said she didn’t know how Mandel ranked his mayoral choices.
“He better have voted for me No. 1, or I’m going to give him a butt-kicking when we get home,” she said. “But I’m pretty sure he voted for me.”
She declined to describe how she filled out her secondary choices, following in the footsteps of two candidates who voted on Saturday morning: Kathryn Garcia, the city’s former sanitation commissioner, and Shaun Donovan, the former federal housing secretary.
Garcia and Donovan both cast their votes in Park Slope, Brooklyn, shortly after early voting launched in the city.
Wiley appears to be surging after scoring endorsements this month from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).
She received the third-most first-place support in a survey of the field released on Monday and conducted between June 3 and June 9. With 15% of the top-choice votes in the poll, she trailed Garcia (17%) and Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams (24%).
On Monday, Garcia framed the race as a two-person battle between herself and Adams.
“Every candidate is entitled to their own opinion,” Wiley said of Garcia’s take. “I will tell you what I am measuring this campaign on — people. And I feel it.”
Check out our special section for the latest news on the critical 2021 elections in NYC. And to have the essential news and analysis sent to your inbox, sign up for our Campaign Diaries newsletter.
