As New York City faces steep recovery, voters head to polls in mayoral election

Reuters | Voters in New York City head to the polls on Tuesday to select Democratic and Republican nominees for mayor, following a campaign dominated by debate over public safety as the city recovers from the pandemic and confronts a surge in shootings.

The winner of the crowded Democratic contest, who may not be known until mid-July, will be a heavy favorite to succeed term-limited Mayor Bill de Blasio in November’s general election. Democratic registered voters outnumber Republican voters by more than a 6-to-1 ratio, state data shows.

The next mayor will be confronted with deep challenges including wealth inequality, police accountability, a lack of affordable housing and a struggling tourism industry in the country’s most populous city of about 8.2 million residents.

The leading Democratic contenders include Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, former presidential candidate and entrepreneur Andrew Yang, former sanitation chief Kathryn Garcia, civil rights lawyer and former MSNBC analyst Maya Wiley and City Comptroller Scott Stringer.

The latest poll from Ipsos shows Eric Adams is maintaining his lead.

The poll finds that he is the first choice of a plurality of likely Democratic voters, and that it would take him 7 ranked-choice voting rounds to cross the 50 percent threshold.

According to the poll, Adams is the first choice of a little more than one-fourth of likely Democratic voters.

Andrew Yang is in second, and Kathryn Garcia and Maya Wiley are tied for third, according to Ipsos.

Almost all of the top candidates would make history: Adams as the city’s second Black mayor, Yang as the first Asian-American mayor, Garcia as the first female mayor and Wiley as the first Black female mayor.

In the Republican election, Curtis Sliwa, the founder of the patrol group Guardian Angels, is running against Fernando Mateo, a businessman who created the “Toys for Guns” program in the 1990s.