NYC mayoral contenders clash and campaign one day before election
Just a day before voters get their last chance to select New York City’s next mayor, the top four contenders continued to trade punches over ranked-choice voting, with Eric Adams taking to the airwaves to attack rivals Andrew Yang and Kathryn Garcia for campaigning together in the race’s homestretch.
Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, appeared Monday morning on CNN to reiterate the kinds of criticisms he and his surrogates leveled over the weekend when they decried the last-minute alliance as aimed at disenfranchising Black voters.
Even though his own campaign released quotes from supporters calling it “voter suppression,” Adams would not go quite as far as his surrogates. Still, he refused to close the door on such rhetoric Monday.
“It sent the wrong signal and the wrong message,” Adams said of the ranked-choice alliance. “I can say this: that African-Americans are very clear on voter suppression. We know about a poll tax. We know about the fight that we’ve had historically — how you had to go through hurdles to vote. And so they feel based on their perception that it suppressed the vote, then I respect their feelings. It’s not for me to interpret their feelings.”
During a campaign event in Bensonhurst, Yang said Adams and his supporters were engaging in “race-baiting.”
“It’s hard to characterize people getting out the vote as anything other than positive. We need people to make their voices heard. We need people to express their preferences for more than one candidate,” the entrepreneur and former presidential candidate said when asked about Adams’ remarks. “I have a hard time seeing where he’s coming from. I will say that the last thing New York City needs is a mayor who uses race-baiting any time he is criticized.”
Yang responded to concerns that Adams may not accept the results of the election once ranked-choice voting is factored in, noting that it’s why he asked Adams if he would during a Democratic primary debate.
“He said he would,” Yang said. “New Yorkers should hold him to his word.”
Later in the day, Adams used some of the nastiest rhetoric yet in the campaign and called Yang a “fraud” and a “liar.”
“I’m still scratching my head: What is Andrew Yang still doing in this race?” he said. “Andrew Yang is a fraud. He’s a liar. We could care less about Andrew Yang. We are so focused on the race.”
For the last several weeks, Adams has consistently led in polling of the Democratic primary race. An Ipsos poll released Monday projected he’d defeat Yang 28% to 20% in the first round of ranked-choice voting and would win 56% to 44% over Yang once all rankings are tallied.
Since the city’s electorate is overwhelmingly made up of Democrats, it’s likely that whoever emerges victorious in the primary will win the general election.
Yang has made glowing remarks about Garcia for months and — while the former city sanitation commissioner had brushed his compliments aside earlier in the race — the two campaigned together Saturday, Sunday and Monday.
Yang has said he would rank Garcia No. 2, but she still demurred when asked who she’d rank second. When asked about the accusations of voter suppression from the Adams’ camp, Garcia said: “I am all about getting people out to vote.”
“I want it to be the easiest possible thing. I want to make sure we’re talking to all of our young people. I want every New Yorker out there,” she said. “That is what democracy is about. It is critically important that everyone come out and vote tomorrow, if you haven’t already done [it.]”
While high-profile Adams supporters have blasted her teaming up with Yang, making such pacts is permissible under ranked-choice voting and there’s a long precedent for doing so under the system.
Maya Wiley, Mayor de Blasio’s former legal counsel who’s gained ground on Adams in recent polls, has campaigned mostly on her own. Like Adams, she is Black, but she blasted him Monday for refusing to shut down the suggestion that Yang and Garcia teaming up amounts to a ploy to suppress the Black vote.
“This partnership is not racist, and we should not be using this term so loosely against other candidates at the end of a long campaign when New Yorkers are all coming together to make important choices,” Wiley said in a written statement. “These accusations are a weaponization of real fears and concerns about our democracy, and have no place here.”
Wiley, who was talking with voters Monday in Washington Heights, said that while voter suppression is still a pressing concern in other parts of the U.S. it isn’t one in the Big Apple.
“The attack is real, but it is not here,” she said. “We have no poll tax here. We have no voter ID laws here. We have had early voting, rather than eliminating early voting. We are not closing polling sites.”
Wiley also remarked on the Adams campaign volunteer who was stabbed in the Bronx over the weekend. According to police, that victim is refusing to cooperate with their investigation and has an extensive rap sheet.
“We have too much division between the community and the Police Department. There’s a lot of distrust, and we can’t solve crimes when we have distrust in policing,” she said. “But we are not going to gain trust unless we have a smart balance between what we do with policing and how we focus it on the job and doing the job well.”
Adams said Monday that the volunteer wasn’t vetted by the campaign, but that he revealed his “long criminal record” when he approached Adams.
“He said, ‘I saw your story — one of your commercials — and it turned my life around. I want to be a part of seeing you become the mayor,’” Adams recalled of their meeting. “So, I can’t look down on someone that was arrested, because I was arrested. I must show people that there’s hope and prosperity. So, we didn’t vet him. We didn’t ask, ‘What is your criminal record?’ He was a volunteer — he wasn’t a staffer.”
Adams, who has made his arrest as a 15-year-old a key part of his campaign narrative, said he intends to visit the volunteer at Lincoln Hospital again and urge him to cooperate with the NYPD.
“I’m going to go see him again and say, ‘Listen, it’s important for you to cooperate with the police so we can find the people who are responsible,’” he said.
With Rocco Parascandola
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