Colby McCoy
Despite running a blue-collar campaign that focused on fighting crime, restoring public safety and improving — not defunding — the police, Eric Adams outran multiple high-profile progressives in their congressional districts.
Adams, the Brooklyn Borough president and a former NYPD officer and state senator, won the Democratic nomination to be the city’s next mayor Tuesday after former City Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia conceded. Though Adams only won by one point after the ranked choice voting process concluded, he ran up the count in working class neighborhoods and neighborhoods of color across the Bronx, Queens, Staten Island and Brooklyn.
“This wasn’t simply a campaign, it was a five-borough movement of working-class New Yorkers coming together for a safer, stronger, healthier City,” Adams said Tuesday. “And our strength and message is why we won.”
Adams was ranked first on 45% of ballots in the Bronx, giving him a nearly 29 point lead over the rest of the field. He led the field by over 14 points in Queens, and by approximately 10 points in Brooklyn and Staten Island.
Manhattan, the wealthiest of New York City’s five boroughs, was the only one that Adams did not win.
Adams’ victories were striking compared to several prominent progressives. In 2018, Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez won by just 7% among Bronx voters in her primary, while two years later Democratic Rep. Jamaal Bowman beat Eliot Engel by 25% among the same group.
But while both Ocasio-Cortez and Bowman support defunding the police and Medicare-for-All, Adams adamantly supports the NYPD and centered his campaign around restoring public trust and enabling it to effectively and responsibly protect New York City residents.
And while Maya Wiley, the leading progressive mayoral candidate, was endorsed by Ocasio-Cortez, Bowman and other high-profile progressives, Adams was endorsed largely by moderates and labor unions.
“What Eric Adams has said quite well is that we need to listen to communities that are concerned about public safety, even as we fight for critical reforms in policing and racial justice more broadly in our society,” Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, who chairs the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee tasked with protecting the House majority, told The New York Times.
Adams is now poised to become New York City’s next mayor in November, and is an overwhelming favorite to beat Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa.
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