Felipe, thanks for doing this, as always. First, can you give us a lay of the mayoral landscape? Who’s running?
Notably, Eric Adams is skipping the June primary and will run in the general election, but we’ll get to that in a moment. The Democratic primary, which for most intents and purposes is considered the de facto election in a city as heavily Democratic as NYC, will feature one/ heavy slugger and a series of lower-profile candidates who will have to duke it out among each other to unseat that presumptive nominee. That, of course, would be Andrew Cuomo, the former longtime governor of the state who resigned back in 2021 after a series of scandals, including sexual harassment allegations.
My feelings on this, and on Cuomo writ large, are pretty much out there already, with the main upshot being that I’m naturally skeptical of an executive whose employees generally either hate working for him or end up in a sort of fanatical devotion towards him, and that his trail of scandals is more extensive and concerning than most voters remember. Nonetheless, he has heavy-duty name recognition in a low-turnout race that depends on getting activated bases to turn out and then convincing those voters who wander into a voting booth on election day to fill the bubble next to your name because they have some vague awareness of who you are.
Also seeking the Dem nod are (in rough order or prominence) Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, Assembly member Zohran Mamdani, Comptroller Brad Lander, State Senator Zellnor Myrie, State Senator Jessica Ramos, former Comptroller Scott Stringer, investor Whitney Tilson, and former Assembly member Michael Blake. Most of these people have some political cachet — Speaker Adams has raised her profile significantly over the past few months, Mamdani has managed a sort of organic virality and decent amount of coverage that includes a Politico Magazine profile, and both Lander and Stringer have technically won citywide races — but they are still running from behind in the attention race.
Most of these candidates also have a perhaps more substantial problem, which is that they’re not just running against Cuomo but running collectively in the progressive lane while Cuomo more or less gets the centrist Democrat lane to himself. Tilson and Blake are probably his closest ideological rivals, but also some of the more marginal of the candidates; Speaker Adams isn’t exactly an out-and-out progressive, but she also doesn’t have the same business-friendly, chastise-the-left stance as Cuomo, and has shepherded some very progressive legislation through the Council.
The race also features two independent candidates for the general election, including lawyer and former prosecutor Jim Walden, who is partially self-funding his campaign and is positioning himself in the mold of an outsider coming to clean house. Then there’s the elephant in the room, Mayor Adams, who announced last week, shortly after a federal judge fully dismissed the charges that were still overhanging him, that he is staying out of the Democratic primary altogether and intends to run as an independent in November. Having freed himself from the tether to Donald Trump does not seem to mean that he’s changing strategy, though; he shocked observers last week by plugging conservative provocateur and current FBI Director Kash Patel’s book on the supposed deep state and has been forceful making the case for collaborating with Trump.
As was the case in 2021, Republicans seem to be gearing up to put radio host, Guardian Angels founder, and generally unserious candidate Curtis Sliwa up as their candidate. I don’t expect he will really come up much as we move forward in the race.
Now, explain who gets to vote in June, and how it will work?
Registered voters in a given party will get to vote for their party nominee via the ranked-choice voting system, which makes this the second mayoral election where that system is in place (only for primaries). Ultimately, with Sliwa being the only real GOP candidate, there will only be a competitive Democratic primary, which will be open to registered Democrats, who can rank the candidates in order of their preferences so that their votes will ultimately last for potentially several rounds until their preferred candidates are either all defeated or one wins. I did a short explainer on ranked choice back when it first debuted in 2021, which gives you a sense of how that works.
Wait, so if I did not register in a party, it’s too late for me?
Too late for you to vote in a primary, yes, not the general election in November. The way New York’s primaries work is that they are partisan – i.e. the only voters that can participate in these primaries are those registered to that party, and the deadline for party registration for this cycle was February 14. That means if you were not registered as a Democrat by that date, you cannot vote in the Democratic primary.
Feel free to direct us to the best Tik Tok or food analogy or graphic animation you’ve seen to explain ranked-choice voting.
This short PBS video does a pretty good job of explaining the concept in broad strokes.
We’ve heard Andrew Cuomo is gonna win. Why and who will propel that?
I got into this a bit before but it largely just comes down to name recognition, plus Cuomo has some of that sheen of the bully that can defeat the bully – i.e. Trump. A lot of people found Cuomo abrasive and domineering, but while that was a detriment in some senses, he seems to want to play it up as a boon in the midst of the federal government’s meltdown and power grab.
Bronx Democratic Rep. Ritchie Torres was among the first prominent elected officials to endorse Cuomo, telling the New York Post “we don’t need a Mr. Nice Guy. We need a Mr. Tough Guy.” This is, to my view, completely contrived bullshit, but it will have some resonance among voters, who might also remember Cuomo’s consistent presence during the early Covid pandemic; despite what we know now about his actual handling of the crisis behind the scenes, which made for some good TV and solidified him in a lot of minds as a calming voice of reason and authority.
What do you make of the small donors and social media fueling Zohran Mamdani’s campaign? Does he have a chance? When people say “We’re just glad he’s in the race” what does that mean?
Mamdani has been a fixation of right-wing rags like the Post for weeks (Post editorial board: “Pro-crime Andrew Cuomo and Zohran Mamdani, meet your NYC running mate: Soho stabber Muslim Brunson”), which is probably just the way he likes it. Mamdani is young, energetic, and unabashedly progressive. While a lot of the other candidates in the progressive lane are in some ways tempering their leftist ideas on the notion that NYC has moved right — borne out by a swing towards Trump in the last election, which I attributed to a number of inputs — Mamdani is betting on riding a resurgent wave of progressive energy.
I don’t think it’s a bad strategy. New York City elections have such abysmal turnout that activating even a relatively small group of new voters, including young voters and those who generally sit out local elections, can really move the needle. Ranked choice makes this strategy a lot more potent. In a first-past-the-post system, all of the progressives would effectively act as spoilers for each other; here, a person who ranks Ramos or Lander first is liable to rank Mamdani second, which gives him a real shot, in my view. I’d still call him an underdog by a big margin, but it’s not a pipe dream that he could consolidate enough leftist energy to put City Hall in view.
How much will the ability to stand up to Donald Trump matter in who New Yorkers vote for? Who is running in the Republican Party? Do they have a chance?
Sliwa is basically a non-entity here. I would expect him to be something of a sideshow for most of the race. I do think standing up to Trump will be a big topic of conversation, especially as Mayor Adams has aligned himself so closely with the president, such that challengers can draw that pretty clear distinction between themselves and the incumbent.
Even with his gains in NYC over the last cycle, Trump still lost big, and a lot has happened in the intervening few months. As we enter what will likely be a prolonged recession and the administration continues its attempts to strip civil rights and due process, I think a lot of people who aren’t necessarily big politics followers will be paying attention and looking for candidates to say the right things about standing tall against the president.
Does Eric Adams running as an independent help or hurt his chances? Isn’t this a way of “working” the system? We’ve seen council members switch parties or run under both parties to help solidify their win.
I mean, there’s nothing exactly nefarious about it, though it certainly is unorthodox. It almost certainly will give him at least a slight advantage, as instead of running in a field of six or seven strong-ish candidates, he will have the chance to run basically head-to-head against the winner of the primary, likely Cuomo, in a first-past-the-post election (general elections are not ranked choice). I don’t think that by any means makes him a front-runner, though; he’s very battered politically and I don’t really see his strategy of coziness with Trump working (some folks thing he’s ultimately gunning for an administration position, which I don’t necessarily agree with, but I think he’d take one post-loss).
Voting today is much different than before, there’s a fundamental switch in parties, candidates’ backgrounds don’t seem to matter (felonies, allegations, cases dismissed, etc.). Is there something being lost? What can one person do to help preserve democracy?
There’s a lot in this question, and I’m not sure that it’s answerable neatly; I called the 2024 election our first “post-truth” election in a previous Epicenter piece, and I stand by that. I think the problem comes down to something very basic, which is that we all don’t really inhabit the same reality anymore. The stuff that seems so salient to us — the convictions, the promises to effectively tank the economy, and so on — are either simply not getting through to a lot of people, or are getting through in a way that’s completely warped and presented through the lens of essentially an entirely alternate world.
Of course, reality has a way of ultimately bursting through these bubbles if things get acute enough, and things are certainly getting pretty acute. No amount of spin is going to obscure a generational market crash, nor bring tourists back to tourist-dependent businesses and localities, nor stop the spread of measles. My hope is that at least this can finally snap some folks out of it, and what needs to happen then is that energy needs to be harnessed. That means — and I know this is hard — that we can’t treat people who’ve been deluded as plainly the enemy.
Yes, it might be cathartic to say “I told you so” and to watch people realize that they’re being hurt by what they voted for, but the more useful next step is to take that sense of betrayal they have and mold it to be politically useful. So if you’ve got Trump-voter friends or relatives, now is a good time to start pointing out just how different this is from the bill of goods they were sold, and potentially peel them off.
Will New York ever elect a woman? How are Jessica Ramos and Adrienne Adams resonating with voters? And does Ramos’ opposition to the casino at Citi Field help or hurt?
I think Speaker Adams has a decent shot. Ramos less so, but Adams has built up a lot of credibility and profile over the last year and she’s got real accomplishments to tout. We got very close to electing a woman with Kathryn García last time around (final primary round vote: 50.4 to 49.6;) and it’ll definitely happen at some point. Not sure if this is the cycle. I also don’t think a lot of voters are really considering the potential casino as a top political issue; I think it might help a little, as that’s I think a relatively short-sighted economic project.
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The New York City primary election is Tuesday, June 24, 2025. Polls are open from 6 to 9 p.m.
Early voting runs from June 14, 2025 – June 22, 2025. To find your poll site and view your ballot, click here.
