First round of voting shows Adams with significant lead in mayoral race; Council races complicated; Hudson leads Hollingsworth in 35th, though ranked choice voting could revise results

Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams opened up a significant if not definitive lead in initial election results in the Democratic mayoral primary, gaining nearly 32% of first-choice votes, to 22.22% for former MSNBC pundit Maya Wiley and 19.48% for former city Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia.

The latter two seemed to gain from the imploding campaigns of nonprofit executive Dianne Morales and city Comptroller Scott Stringer poorly. More clarity will surface when ranked choices are reshuffled and absentee ballots--which have a week to arrive--are counted, but Adams seemed confident. 

(The Democratic winner will face Republican Curtis Sliwa, so the primary is typically tantamount to election.)

“Social media does not pick a candidate,” Adams said, not unwisely, in a seeming critique of the Andrew Yang bandwagon. “People on Social Security pick a candidate.” (Less wisely, and more ominously, his campaign denied entry to the election watch party to two reporters--Ross Barkan and David Freedlander--who'd written critically about Adams.)

Indeed, while tech entrepreneur Yang, whose candidacy eventually cratered, at the late moment urged supporters to rank Garcia second, some, such as in the Orthodox Jewish community, advocated a second-choice vote for Adams, given his similar commitment to their interests.

A more left-leaning Council?

There are some signs that the City Council will lean more left. The New York Times's summary:

As progressive groups hoped to push the Council to the left, early results showed two of their favored candidates had won and others appeared likely to be elected.

I discuss below the results for the Council districts near Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park. 

Notably, the 35th District race is too close to call, with former Council aide Crystal Hudson, the choice of the Democratic establishment and major labor unions, narrowly leading tenant activist Michael Hollingsworth, endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America, in the first round.

A mayoral map

The map below shows that Adams--a former cop who focused on public safety in his campaign--did best in Brooklyn and the Bronx and southeast Queens, especially in largely Black and Hispanic neighborhoods, but he also had significant endorsements from major unions.

The map is incomplete (omits absentee ballots) and just represents the unofficial first round #NYCMayor primary results. But it's fascinating nonetheless. We'll be following closely (& mapping) how the ballots move during RCV rounds. cc @commoncauseny pic.twitter.com/YYGCEie9Dn

— Steven Romalewski (@SR_spatial) June 23, 2021

The unofficial mayoral results, from the Board of Elections

Brooklyn Borough President results

In the race for Brooklyn BP, left-lane Council Member Antonio Reynoso, with 28.16% of the vote, has a seemingly comfortable lead over centrist Council Member Robert Cornegy, with 19.15%, and Assemblymember Jo Anne Simon, with 17.61%. But it's not unlikely that ranked choice voting will narrow some gaps.

In the 35th District

Note that while Hudson has a lead of nearly 1,300 first-choice votes over Hollingsworth, two candidates critical of incumbent Laurie Cumbo and former aide Hudson--Renee Collymore and Curtis Harris, gained 4,000 and 1,436 votes respectively. (Collymore tweeted that Cumbo supported Hudson.)

So one question is how many of their supporters ranked secondary candidates and, if so, Hollingsworth over Hudson. (I should have acknowledged this possibility in my previous article, which, as with most of the other press coverage, framed this as a two-person race.) Regina Kinsey, who got 1,436 votes, was the most centrist candidate.

In the 33rd District

Replacing Council Member Steve Levin, Lincoln Restler, who consolidated both mainstream and left-leaning endorsements, won 48.22%, a surely decisive victory over Council aide Elizabeth Adams and others.

In the 36th District

Replacing Council Member Robert Cornegy, Black Lives Matter activist Chi Osse, with 7,690 votes, held a strong first-round lead over Community Board 3 District Manager Henry Butler and "city government veteran" Tahirah Moore, with 4,721 and 4,720 votes respectively, as well as pastor and educator Robert Waterman, with 2,910 votes. 

However, ranked choice voting could reshuffle the latter three candidates' support against Osse.

In the 39th District

Replacing Council Member Brad Lander (who holds a strong lead in the Democratic primary for City Comptroller), Council aide Shahana Hanif, endorsed by the Working Families Party and New York Communities for Change (among others), gained 10,691 votes, with her leading opponent DSA-endorsed Brandon West.