New York City’s next mayor will face challenges as big as any in city history, including leading the recovery from the coronavirus pandemic and tackling centuries of racial inequity in policing, education and health care. Will voters choose a seasoned administrator, a veteran elected official, a business-friendly moderate or a flashy newcomer like Andrew Yang? With the Democratic primary that will likely determine the winner barely four months away, the city is just starting to pay attention to what will surely be one of its most consequential elections. The past year has been a tough one for the nation’s largest city, which was overwhelmed by the pandemic and convulsed by protests following the death of George Floyd. Then came the exhausting 2020 presidential election and its turbulent aftermath. Even some plugged-in New Yorkers are barely aware there is a mayoral race with more than two dozen candidates. “It is my passion and my job to read the news and pay attention, and it’s just been a hard year, you know?” said Olivia Lapeyrolerie, a former press aide to the term-limited Mayor Bill de Blasio. “I think folks aren’t really going to start tuning in until it winnows down a little bit.” In addition to Yang, serious contenders in the June 22 Democratic primary include City Comptroller Scott Stringer, Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, civil rights lawyer and former MSNBC legal analyst Maya Wiley, banker Ray McGuire, former U.S. Housing Secretary Shaun Donovan and former city sanitation commissioner Kathryn Garcia. The primary will be the city’s first to be determined by ranked choice voting, in which voters can choose several candidates and rank them in order of preference. Another wrinkle is that the contest is being fought largely on Zoom and YouTube because of coronavirus restrictions. A poll of likely Democratic primary voters by Fontas Advisors and Core Decision Analytics showed Yang leading each of his two closest competitors, Adams and Stringer, by more than 10 percentage points. The poll was conducted from Jan. 20 to Jan. 25, shortly after Yang officially joined the race with a campaign video directed by “Black Swan” filmmaker Darren Aronofsky. It was unclear whether Yang’s early advantage will hold up as more people start paying attention to the contest. Bruce Gyory, a Democratic political strategist and an adjunct professor of political science at the University of Albany, said political experts “thought that the voters would be focusing on the mayoral race here in New York by Thanksgiving, and instead they’re not likely to be focused on it until the end of February or early March.” Yang, 46, who rode his universal basic income proposal to a decent showing in the presidential race, has already drawn negative media coverage for never voting in a New York City mayoral election — although he has lived in the city since 1996 — and for spending much of the pandemic in his vacation home north of the city. “I don’t know that the voters care as much as the pundit class about that, but we’ll see,” said Gyory. Adams and Stringer, two veteran elected officials who are both 60 years old, were considered the front-runners before Yang entered the race. Adams, a former police officer who served four terms in New York’s state Senate before winning the borough president’s […]
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