New York City, the nation’s largest city, is holding its mayoral race this November, with a primary election beginning on June 22, 2021. With incumbent Mayor Bill de Blasio ineligible for a third term, the race between the Democratic two frontrunners — businessman Andrew Yang and Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams — is heating up.
With a population of over 8 million and boasting a metro area population of over 20 million people, New York is by far the largest city and metro area in the United States. (The next city, Los Angeles, has “just” 3 million people in its city limits and 13 million in the metro area.) It is, therefore, no surprise that New York City’s mayoral election is one of the most closely-watched mayoral elections in the U.S.
Off years have typically far fewer races than in midterm or presidential years (there are no federal races after all in off years), but that is not to say that there is nothing to see. In 2021, not only is New York hosting its mayoral race, but a large number of U.S. cities, including Minneapolis, San Antonio, Cleveland, and Omaha are hosting mayoral elections too. Virginia and New Jersey will also be hosting gubernatorial and state legislative elections, which we will cover in a future post. There may also be a recall election to watch in California.
De Blasio has had two very challenging terms. He was first elected in 2013 and reelected in 2017, and has supported many socially and fiscally liberal policies in the city. Not only has he had to oversee the COVID-19 pandemic, which completely ravaged the city in March 2020, but he also had to oversee a police department in which the public demanded reform, New York City’s crumbling mass transit system and infrastructure, budget deficits, and more.
His successor will face a tough path ahead getting America’s most important financial hub back on track in the most major disaster the city has faced since 9/11, but will also be inheriting a city plagued with rising violent crime and deep inequality, both racially and socioeconomically, making this one of the most consequential mayoral elections the city has seen since 9/11.
The heavily Democratic city (76 percent of city residents in the five boroughs voted for Joe Biden in 2020, and the city has not once voted for a Republican president since 1924) means that the key race here is not the general election that will take place in November, but rather who will emerge victorious in the Democratic primary that will take place on June 22.
The Democratic primary field is very crowded, with over a dozen Democrats announcing bids to run for mayor of the nation’s largest city. Of the candidates, the ones with the most potential are Andrew Yang, a businessman of Taiwanese descent; Eric Adams, the current Brooklyn Borough President and former captain of the New York Police Department; Scott Stringer, the city’s comptroller; and Kathryn Garcia, a former sanitation commissioner of the city.
Among these candidates, one of them — Yang — has been the clear favorite in virtually all polls conducted since Yang announced his bid for the mayor, with Adams in second place. The most recently conducted poll by Slingshot Strategies, which has a B/C rating from the polling aggregate website FiveThirtyEight, showed Yang taking the lead with 25 percent of the first-choice vote, and Adams with 15 percent of the first-choice vote.
With the ranked-choice voting system, the race would eventually whittle its way down to the top two finishers, and Yang would end up with a total 59 percent of the vote according to this poll.
Yang, who gained nationwide fame in the 2020 Democratic presidential debates, was a tech executive and calls his political views based on “human-centered capitalism,” and one of his main policy goals during the Democratic primary season was the implementation of universal basic income — a guaranteed monthly payment from the government to every U.S. citizen above 18 (Yang suggested this value be set at $1,000 a month).
He does not support (but does not oppose) Medicare for All; instead, he supported keeping private insurance while reducing costs and expanding coverage. He has proposed a value-added tax to combat tax avoidance by large companies, supports voting rights legislation, ending gerrymandering, lowering the national voting age to 16, legalizing marijuana, and is pro-abortion rights, as well as supporting carbon taxes and and promotion of technology by the government.
He has also been accredited with bring out the Asian American vote.
Eric Adams is less well-known nationwide, but he has had a long history serving at the local level in New York City, having served in the NYC Transit Police, the NYPD, the New York State Senate, and now the Brooklyn Borough President. He ran, but lost in the primary, in a bid to run for the U.S. House in 1994.
An African American, Adams was one of the first state senators to vote in favor of legalizing same-sex marriage back in 2009, and though it failed to pass then, it passed two years later in June 2011, making it the sixth state to legalize same-sex marriage. He is also in favor of gun control and most liberal policy positions.
With just 10 weeks to go until the primary begins, this will be one key race to watch heading into summer.