NYC mayoral wannabes Kathryn Garcia, Shaun Donovan cast early votes, Andrew Yang holds out
New York City mayoral candidates Kathryn Garcia and Shaun Donovan cast their ballots in Brooklyn on Saturday, taking advantage of the first day of early voting in the Democratic primary.
Garcia arrived as voting kicked off around 8 a.m. at John Jay High School in Park Slope, where rival Donovan also cast his ballot about an hour later.
Saturday marked the first day of early voting in the June 22 Democratic primary for mayor, comptroller and public advocate, City Council members, borough presidents and the district attorneys of Brooklyn and Manhattan.
Garcia, joined by her children Anna and Alex and her mother, Ann McIver, was coy about how she filled out her ballot.
“Oh, I’m not telling,” said the former Sanitation commissioner under Mayor de Blasio, but then added that it was a “strange experience” to vote for herself.
“I’ve not been a politician, so this is my first time,” said Garcia, who lives in Park Slope. “But we’ve got to have transformation in the city.”
Donovan, who lives in nearby Boerum Hill, was joined by his wife, Liza Gilbert, and their dog, Wiley.
Asked what it was like to vote for himself, the former head of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget during President Obama’s second term called it a “powerful feeling.”
He said he was excited about “all the work, all the outreach, to have folks walking up to me — people I’ve worked with in the past from the neighborhood excited for me — and feeling a huge amount of momentum here and around the city.”
He added that he used all his options under the city’s new ranked-choice voting system.
“What I will share is everybody should use all their choices,” he said. “That’s why ranked-choice voting is good for democracy because every New Yorker has more say.”
Under the new system, voters can list candidates in order of preference, instead of choosing just one.
If no one wins a majority, the candidate with the least votes is eliminated. The votes that were cast for the eliminated candidate are shifted to those voters’ second choice. The process continues until a candidate wins more than 50% of the vote.
In Manhattan, mayoral candidate and businessman Andrew Yang accompanied his wife Evelyn Yang to a voting station at John Jay College in Hell’s Kitchen — but did not cast a vote himself.
“There’s another ten days for me. I haven’t cast my vote just yet,” he said, adding that his No. 2 choice is Garcia, as he has said before.
Filling out her ballot, his wife said: “Hmm, who am I going to vote for today?”
Yang brought up a ticket he got on Thursday, the night of the recent mayoral debate, when he was pulled over riding his bicycle on Broadway near the Flatiron Building.
“I was not clear on what I was doing wrong,” Yang said. “The cops said ‘Be safer.’
“I try to be good, but I’m sure every once in a while when there’s no cars around I’ll do something.”
Early voting runs through Sunday, June 20.
Mayor de Blasio leaves office at the end of the year due to term limits. Whoever wins the Democratic primary is considered all but certain to win the general election in November.
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