NYC Mayor/2021 Megathread

[brucejoel99]

And a shoe drops:

https://twitter.com/michaelgartland/status/1390038287901937665

[brucejoel99]

MAJOR ENDORSEMENT
https://twitter.com/nypost/status/1391764377972400128?s=20
Welp, sorry Yang

Since when is the Post worthy of listening to?

[brucejoel99]

The NYT’s endorsement for mayor is.... Kathryn Garcia.

https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1391896355875041283?s=21

The tech entrepreneur and former presidential candidate Andrew Yang has led in many early polls, promising to make the city fun again, with an attractive optimism. But nothing so far suggests that he has the experience to run New York City on Day 1. (Credit or criticism where it is due: We did say when he sought our endorsement for the Democratic nominee for president that we hoped he would get involved with New York politics.)

I say this not in defense of Yang in any way, but rather to merely just sh*t on the Editorial Board instead (though it's not like that very popular activity was ever a hard thing to do to begin with), but I just find it absolutely hilarious that the Editorial Board literally urged & hoped for Yang to get involved in NYC politics as part of their endorsement piece from the presidential primary last year for the explicit & express purpose of developing some actual "experience in government," & then when he actually decided to do so by pursuing what's basically amounted to a brute force steamroll campaign to the nomination, they try & say "no, not like that! Besides, you don't have the experience in government that'd be necessary in order for you to gain some experience in government!" Like, sorry (not sorry) that y'all weren't careful with what you wished for! It's almost like there's a reason that that's a saying in the first place: your wish might just come true after all!!

Anyway, who knows? Perhaps this will actually turn out to be a major boon to her campaign in the end, but I wouldn't be all that surprised if there aren't a lot of people out there who are still willing to put a significant amount of faith in anything that the Editorial Board has to say on any matter of significance, & especially so on politics, given their evident missteps. Though all the same, I also wouldn't be at all surprised if it turns out that the NYT's prestige hasn't actually diminished at all &/or in any meaningful way, especially among the audience that it's always been perpetually able to attract & retain.

[brucejoel99]

In an interview, the candidates was asked what the median price of a home in Brooklyn was, and some of the answers were completely disqualifying: https://www.newsweek.com/nyc-mayor-candidates-shaun-donovan-ray-mcguire-think-average-brooklyn-home-costs-100k-1590464

Correct answer: $900k

Wiley: $1.8 million
Stringer: $1 million
Yang: $900k
Garcia: $800k
Adams: $550k
Morales: $500k
Donovan: $100k
McGuire: $90k

All else aside, props to the guy.

[brucejoel99]

https://twitter.com/5thAveSnoozer/status/1395467579406397440

[brucejoel99]

Jumaane really should have run this time, probably the only thing that could have avoided a further right mayor than De Blasio (I consider Stringer around the same as de Blasio ideologically, obviously some differences though).

I'd presume that he'll wanna run when the new Mayor elected this year is term-limited in 2029, as that's also gonna be when he's term-limited out of the Public Advocate's office.

[brucejoel99]

Anyhow, this is actually the first time in which I've been able to check in on this race in the last few days, so seeing Garciamentum followed by Morales' implosion is... something. Definitely invokes some memories of how the Anybody-But-Quinn people successfully quashed her front-runner status back in 2013 by consolidating their support around de Blasio - all while Weiner was imploding - just a few weeks before the primary. History may not repeat, but it definitely rhymes.

[brucejoel99]

Anyhow, this is actually the first time in which I've been able to check in on this race in the last few days, so seeing Garciamentum followed by Morales' implosion is... something. Definitely invokes some memories of how the Anybody-But-Quinn people successfully quashed her front-runner status back in 2013 by consolidating their support around de Blasio - all while Weiner was imploding - just a few weeks before the primary. History may not repeat, but it definitely rhymes.

Why were people against Quinn?

Because she was literally just "Bloomberg but with a "(D)" this time" & NYC c. 2013 was done with Bloomberg.

[brucejoel99]

https://nypost.com/2021/05/27/eric-adams-says-he-wants-retirement-home-in-israel/

A Jewish weekly publication, Mishpacha, asked the Brooklyn borough president if he would be an advocate for Israel as have other mayors. [...] Asked what part of Israel he would choose, Adams said with a laugh, “In the Golan Heights.”

[...]

He called Yang a “shiny new toy” while likening himself to a “Microsoft investment.”

“The second you see that the shiny new toy is no longer so shiny, and Eric’s message is getting out, don’t allow someone else to take your investment away. I am your Microsoft,” he said.

Anybody who refers to themself in the 3rd-person can't be allowed to be elected to public office.

[brucejoel99]

Eric Adams is really, really bad

He’s the best candidate.

[brucejoel99]

There's a pattern to be sensed here.

[brucejoel99]

New NY1/IPSOS poll. Adams in the lead, Yang losing momentum fast, and Garcia and Wiley gaining.

This was taken May 17-31st, so before the 2nd accusation against Stringer, the collapse of the Morales campaign, and the string of endorsements for Wiley.

https://twitter.com/ZackFinkNews/status/1401844880968753154

Aside from telling us that Adams leads on the 1st round, this poll is pretty useless in that it's not actually a full RCV poll.

[brucejoel99]

So apparently nobody knows where Eric Adams actually lives, & he might even be living in NJ. First Yang's upstate saga & now this? This election is f**king nuts. In any event, any ideas as to how this may affect him - if at all - with 2 weeks left?

[brucejoel99]

https://twitter.com/HenryRosoff/status/1402748589839900677

Memerson, but Wiley clearly is now in the top candidate bracket.

God, why is Emerson just so noisy? First a Garcia surge, & now a Wiley surge, all the while showing a 14-point swing among undecideds in 8 days!? I don't wanna read too much into it, but I hope there's still time for Adams to be stopped.

[brucejoel99]

Yang has proven in more than a few ways over the course of this campaign that he's not the best, but given that all of the polling now shows that the final round will be Adams vs. [Somebody], I hope & pray that enough people who support Garcia (who I'm pretty sure my family in NYC has decided to go with as their #1), Wiley, Donovan, Morales, Stringer, etc. just rank Yang as their #5 in order to try & stop Adams. Say what can be said about Yang, but at worst (or best, depending on one's perspective), he'd just be a figurehead who lets technocratic bureaucrats like Garcia run the city in a Bloomberg-esque manner (sans stop-&-frisk) while he does nothing but undertake photo-ops for 8 straight years, while the thought of a Mayor Adams implementing his policy proposals - especially that god-awful education plan - is just legitimately scary, as is some on the left's shortsighted talk about not ranking Yang or Adams at all just to send a message when Adams is clearly so much worse than Yang. While Yang may not be the best, Adams' policies might just be actively destructive. Isn't this what RCV is meant for: going with your heart early on, then using your brain (cue "lesser of 2 evils") in later rounds?

[brucejoel99]

Rankings if I could vote:

1. Garcia
2. Donovan
3. Yang
4. Wiley
5. McGuire (don't care here, literally just the last non-joke, non-union-busting, non-sexual assaulting, non-Adams pick left)

It seems odd that all of these simulated ranked-ballot polls only show the last hypothetical face-off. Even the best polls have a margin of error of a few points: it would be nice to see how the simulated ballot might end up if, say, the last round is Adams-Wiley. Of the polls taken this month, Emerson showed a 41-30-29 race; Change showed a 37-33-30 race; Schoen Cooperman showed a 40-32-28; Public Opinion showed a 38-33-29 race; and Marist showed a 43-30-27 race. The common factor (besides Adams in first): Wiley was third place in all of them and never by more than a few percentage points. It doesn't seem like that much of a stretch to say that the polls might be a little off or that Wiley continues gaining enough steam to get that 1-4 percent.

In any event, it's becoming pretty clear that the polling on this race is just too all-over-the-place for everybody-but-Adams to - in the absence of further corroborating polling - reach any conclusion other than that much of the data is presumably garbage. For one, the MoE's just don't seem trustable on these polls: the 2nd, 3rd, & 4th-ranking candidates all still seem like they could have decent shots here. Indeed, Adams may be the clear front-runner, but it looks like Garcia, Wiley, & Yang all still have about an equal shot to be the runner-up, depending on who it is exactly that shows up to vote (& if it shakes out well, RCV can obviously boost 2nd-place in the 1st round to victory). Although I guess that Adams wins in the end, the odds thereof aren't as good as the odds were on something like the 2016 presidential election, which were "wrong" too.

[brucejoel99]

Yet another reason to at least rank Yang as 5th, even if one really doesn't like him, in order to just try & stop Adams:

https://twitter.com/CBSNewYork/status/1406007060278480905

[brucejoel99]

Yang tells his supporters to rank Garcia second. This could be make-or-break moment for Adams' frontrunner status, given his support seems to split 50-50ish between Adams and Garcia/Wiley. OTOH, it may be too late to matter.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but is one of these bolded "Adams'" supposed to say "Yang" instead?

[brucejoel99]

Yang tells his supporters to rank Garcia second. This could be make-or-break moment for Adams' frontrunner status, given his support seems to split 50-50ish between Adams and Garcia/Wiley. OTOH, it may be too late to matter.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but is one of these bolded "Adams'" supposed to say "Yang" instead?

The "his" needed to be Yang for better clarity.

Ah, gotcha! Much better now, thanks for clarifying!! And yeah, I'm pretty intrigued about seeing how Tuesday & then the RCV re-allocations over the next month pan out. If I had to guess, the cross-endorsement will probably help Garcia moreso than Yang at this point, but who knows anything anymore? The only thing that's clear is that it's not good news for Adams.

Also, on a more hilarious note, the cross-endorsement's literally out here having Yang go full-on Bobby Newport for Garcia.

[brucejoel99]

Jesus, Adams just sucks so f**king much. In what world does this fund-the-police cop-turned-politician get to declare what the BLM marches were all about? If he wins, then you better believe that he'll be a blight upon the Democratic Party's image: if Rahm made big-city Dems look unappealingly bad, just watch as Mayor Adams wins that race to the bottom.

Adams openly criticizing Badillo for "betraying his Hispanic heritage" by not "marrying within his own race/ethnicity": Okey dokey

Don't forget that Badillo had specifically married a Jewish woman. It didn't just come off as "if you really cared about your fellow PoC, you wouldn't have married a white girl" - which would still be awful in & of itself! - so much as it did as "if you really cared about your fellow PoC, then you wouldn't have married a dIrTy JeW," which is what I've always seen that attack as meaning between-the-lines.

It's really just outright astonishing how that somehow didn't manage to sink his political future, like, at all in the long-run.

[brucejoel99]

God Eric Adams is cynical.

What does Yang get if Garcia wins? I don't understand why he wants to stop Adams, is there some bad blood between the two or something?

A Mayor Garcia & the lack of a Mayor Adams. He's made clear over the course of this campaign that he genuinely considers Garcia to be the 2nd-best person on the ballot besides him, & so he doesn't really have a problem elevating her like this. Compare that to Adams, whom Yang really just sees as laughably corrupt, dishonest & deceitful, & just so awful all-around that he wants him nowhere near power because he'd actively be a disaster for the city. Like him or not, Yang does seem to want what he thinks is best for NYC, & so he has no problem utilizing a little of his remaining political leverage for what he thinks is best &/or called for, at the very least: an Anybody-But-Adams RCV-campaign, which makes sense when he never really attacked any of the other candidates, since he doesn't think that anybody else would be as bad as a "Mayor Adams."

[brucejoel99]

Quick question: What day is the NYC Mayoral primary?

Today.

[brucejoel99]

Hoping Garcia can pull out a win; Adams will definitely get the top spot in initial ranking, but I think Garcia might be able to grab enough #2s to slide ahead. At least hopefully.

To her credit, she at least has the fact that she's basically everybody's favorite #2 going for her at this point, in that she could end up winning just because there aren't any Anybody-But-Garcia people in the same way that there are Anybody-But-Adams people, Anybody-But-Wiley people, Anybody-But-Yang people, etc. Merely just being hated the least - which is precisely what RCV is kinda meant to help reward - could very well end up being enough for Garcia to clinch the win here.

[brucejoel99]

In a similar vein to the previous post, I think we are all unprepared for the Trumpian manner Adams may conduct himself during these next few weeks. He has already displayed hints of it during the cross-endorsement, and the inevitable wanting period will only heighten everyone's nerves. Unless something shocking happens, Adams will win the first round votes counted tonight. We will however get an idea based on comparative turnout by neighborhood and RCV projections if he is in danger of losing that position on the final allocation. Adams has already attacked the RCV process and will likely continue to do so if the data is there for a final round loss. He also could try to claim some legitimacy from his first round victory as if it was the final contest, potentially through an incredibly premature victory party and speech tonight.

https://twitter.com/JonMIPol/status/1407327838861238275?s=20

At this point, somebody could tell me that Eric Adams is literally just a Republican plant who was sent in to infiltrate the Democratic Party in order to make us look just as sh*tty as the likes of Trump, & I'd honestly have no choice but to buy it.

In any event, if Adams' 1st-round lead is a plurality of ~5-6 points, I'd have to presume that any possibility of a long-RCV-tally game has been foreclosed. Even just a ~3-4 point lead, albeit opening up the possibility that Garcia will end up getting enough 2nd-choice votes to surpass him, would still imply a really good chance - ~70%? - for Adams to win in the end. The best we can hope for now is that Adams & Garcia are virtually tied tonight, with us not knowing who the Mayor-designate will be 'til mid-July. This would lead to an arduous & close fight, but one which would presumably favor Garcia.

[brucejoel99]

Oh, & also in some other news:

https://twitter.com/hunterw/status/1407340359332646923
I'm honestly really shocked that AOC would actually do something like this. It's gotta be such a gut-punch to his accusers.