The primaries for the New York City mayoral race are just under a month away, which, if you live in the state and have been on social media at all in the last few months, has become an inescapable reality.

Normally, I love mess, and this year’s primary and race overall is trying its hardest to fill the void Real Housewives of New York has left. But this race is admittedly starting to grind my gears, potentially because it feels like there will truly never be any accountability for disgusting, powerful men, though more likely because it feels like a litmus test for partisan politics nationwide…and the results are not looking good.

Today, I wanted to look at a few things: what ranked-choice voting is and why this race will have it, how some of the central scandals and tensions are shaping this race, and who I personally am endorsing for NYC mayor. I mean, why else did you think I spent four hours at the DMV to switch my license and voter registration seven months ago if not to assert myself as New York City’s most trusted political voice?

Facts n’ Stats

The primaries for the New York City mayoral race will be held on June 24th, in addition to the party primaries for New York City Comptroller, New York City Public Advocate, Manhattan District Attorney (New York County specific), and Borough President races in New York, Kings1, and Bronx counties. Depending on where you’re registered to vote in the five boroughs, your district may also have civil court or city council primaries.

New York has closed primaries, which means only voters affiliated with a party can vote in that party’s primary. As of 2023, there were over 3.1 million registered voters in New York State who were not affiliated with a party, “and roughly a third live in New York City. In 2020, unaffiliated voters overtook Republicans as the second largest voting bloc mirroring the longstanding status quo in New York City” (X).

There are currently eleven Democrats, one Republican, and two Independent candidates running for mayor, meaning the primary next month will largely be to determine the Democratic candidate who will be on the ballot in November. Incumbent Mayor Eric Adams—the Turkish asset of Manhattan—announced last month that he would seek re-election as an Independent candidate instead of a Democrat.

I don’t want to spend too much time talking about Adams because that diva does it enough for all of us, but I did just want to remind everyone that seven prosecutors resigned rather than dismiss the criminal charges against Adams on behalf of Trump’s Department of Justice. The seventh prosecutor, Hagan Scotten, wrote in his resignation letter that

“Our laws and traditions do not allow using the prosecutorial power to influence other citizens, much less elected officials, in this way…If no other lawyer within earshot of the President is willing to give him that advice, then I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool, or enough of a coward, to file your motion…But it was never going to be me” (X).

The other Independent candidate, Jim Walden, is there, too. Additionally, the one Republican currently running is Curtis Sliwa, who notably had his citizen patrol group, the Guardian Angels, attack someone in Times Square on live television. Sliwa stated that the man was a migrant who was “shoplifting first…he resisted, and let’s just say we gave him a little pain compliance his mother back in Venezuela felt the vibrations [of].” However, there was also no evidence to support the allegation that he had been committing a crime and, more to it,

in an interview with The Associated Press, Sliwa said he had believed the man was a migrant because he was “speaking Spanish” and because other Guardian Angels had encountered him with other Spanish speakers on previous patrols (X).

That’s all I want to say on that. Let’s talk about ranked-choice voting: what it is, why it exists, and what you need to do.

Ranked-Choice Voting and You!

In 2009, there was a run-off election to determine who would be on the ballot as the Democratic candidates for Comptroller and New York City Public Advocate in the general election later that year. Earlier that month, no candidate had achieved the then-required 40% majority in their primary races, which prompted the run-off.

However, in the run-off election held on September 29, the “Associated Press reported that 227,489 ballots had been cast in the comptroller’s race and 220,584 ballots in the public advocate’s race—indicating that fewer than 10 percent of registered Democratic voters had cast ballots in the runoffs” (X). The low turnout prompted “a debate over the use of run-off elections,” and between 2009 and 2018, the Charter Revision Commission analyzed how introducing ranked-choice voting could improve elections.

Ranked-choice voting, according to the nonpartisan voting organization Common Cause, means that

instead of voting for just one candidate, New Yorkers are now able to rank their top 5 candidates from first to last choice on the ballot in all primary and special elections for Mayor, Comptroller, Public Advocate, Borough President and City Council. If voters still want to vote for just one candidate, they can.

A candidate who collects a majority of the vote, fifty percent plus one, wins. If no candidate receives over 50 percent of the first choice preferences, the candidate with the fewest first choice preferences is eliminated and voters who ranked that candidate first have their ballots instantly counted for their second choice preference. The process is repeated until there’s a final pair with a majority winner (X).

In 2019, the Charter Revision Commission proposed adopting ranked-choice voting as a ballot measure, which passed with support from 73% of voters.2 In a city as big and varied as New York, ranked-choice voting makes as a lot of sense, as it “favors candidates who appeal to a broad swath of voters, helps reduce negativity in campaigns and enables voters to express support for lesser-known candidates without feeling like they’re throwing away their votes” (X). Additionally, “ranked-choice voting is likely to result in the election of more female and minority candidates which in turn would produce a more diverse pool of candidates willing to compete for public office” (X).

I was intrigued by the argument that ranked-choice voting reduces negativity in campaigns and found that is because

candidates are encouraged to build broader coalitions of voters during the campaign because candidates who are not your top choice may still need your support to win. In city-wide elections with multiple candidates, it will be difficult for a candidate to hit the 50 percent threshold in the first round of voting. A winning campaign will recognize the perils of negative campaigning in an election where the margin of victory could very well depend on a voter’s second or third choice (X).3

However, the New York Times created an interactive guide showing how ranked-choice voting worked in the 2021 Democratic mayoral primary in NYC (which was the first race in which the new system had been implemented), and found that “data shows that voters may not have taken full advantage of the system.” Still, in 2023, which was admittedly a quieter election cycle, voters did take advantage of ranked-choice voting in the races on the ballot, and the process went smoothly.

More to it, Fair Vote found that in races where there were more candidates on the ballot, “67% [of voters] used at least two rankings, and voters in those contests ranked an average of 2.6 candidates out of 4.” They elaborated that

this rate of ranking is an increase over New York City’s 2021 RCV elections for races of comparable size. However, crowded fields in 2021 drew more ranking in the races with five or more candidates; there were no comparable races in 2023 (X).

In any case, the error rates in a ranked-choice voting system are similar to those in a single-choice election, but ranked-choice voting prevents wasted votes by allowing voters to continue having a say in how races are decided even if their first-choice candidate doesn’t win.

Now, of the 11 Democrats running in the primary on June 24th, I wanted to talk about the two front-runners in particular because, much like Joanne the Scammer, I am a messy bitch who lives for drama.

The Andrew Cuomo of It All

There’s a meme I have saved on my phone that I use more regularly than I care to: on it is a little green frog perched on top of a mushroom cap, set against a pink background. Across the image reads, “Not ALL men. But…somehow ALWAYS a man.”

As many of us were between April and August 2020, I was a big fan of Andrew Cuomo’s. Between nearly failing my one credit gym class, finding digital jobs where I could fill my days, and drinking enough to kill multiple Victorian children, my family and I would always tune in to Cuomo’s daily press conferences. When they were over, we’d flip the channel to CNN and watch his brother Chris’s broadcast in what we’d call the Cuomo Brothers Power Hour.

I remember feeling insane every time Trump opened his mouth. I remember watching the death toll counter on the corner of various news broadcasts tick up every morning, wondering why our leaders weren’t doing more to protect us. And so I remember liking Cuomo not because of his politics (of which I admittedly knew very little), but because it felt like there was an adult in the room.

Well fuck that guy, am I right? It really is somehow…ALWAYS a man.

Starting in December 2020, at least thirteen people have come forward to share their experiences with Cuomo, “ranging from harassment to sexual assault; several of the accusers have worked for him, including one anonymous aide who says the governor ‘aggressively groped’ her” in 2020 (X). Lindsey Boylan, a former staffer, was the first to accuse Cuomo of sexual harassment, stating that she was prompted to do so by news that he was being considered for a role in then-President-Elect Biden’s administration, and that “‘there are fewer things more scary than giving this man, who exists without ethics, even more control’” (X).

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In February 2021,

Boylan elaborated in [a Medium] post that Cuomo allegedly fostered a toxic and intimidating environment in which “sexual harassment and bullying is so pervasive that it is not only condoned but expected.” She said Cuomo would touch her on the lower back, arms, and legs; that her boss told her the governor had a “crush” on her; and that Cuomo would make comments about female staffers’ weight and appearance. She also described an episode in which the harassment became physical: “We were in his New York City office on Third Avenue” at a meeting, she wrote. “As I got up to leave and walk toward an open door, he stepped in front of me and kissed me on the lips. I was in shock, but I kept walking.” Boylan also said that she had heard from an additional two former staffers after she wrote her tweets in December who had similar stories of harassment by Cuomo, but they were afraid to speak out (X).

After Boylan’s 2021 post, more women started coming forward with their own troubling accounts, which Cuomo seemed to meet defiantly head-on, including “repeated calls for ‘an outside, independent review that looks at these allegations’” (X). In August 2021, New York Attorney General Letitia James published the findings from her office’s investigation, which affirmed the stories of 11 accusers. Further, a January 2024 agreement between the Department of Justice and the New York state executive chamber found he “subjected at least 13 female government employees ‘to a sexually hostile work environment’ and retaliated against four who complained” (X).

As Angelina Chapin explained best in a 2021 article for The Cut,

the deluge of Cuomo lust [during the pandemic] was accompanied by a large dose of whitewashing. The national spotlight had a soft focus that blurred out more nefarious behavior, past and present. Cuomo may have sounded competent, but in practice, he seriously mishandled aspects of the pandemic: The governor initially delayed a citywide shutdown, deliberately underreported the number of nursing-home deaths (an issue the FBI is now investigating), and fueled the spread of COVID-19 in prisons by refusing to release incarcerated people early on. Tens of thousands of New Yorkers have died from COVID; at one point, New York City had one of the highest death rates in the world. And even before the pandemic, Cuomo’s never had a progressive track record on issues like criminal justice, public transportation, housing, Medicare, or taxing the rich. He’s also been involved in high-profile scandals involving shoddy infrastructure and bid rigging, one of which landed his aide in prison on federal bribery charges (X).

Without even getting into all of the other scandals Chapin mentions, the fact that Cuomo is trying to run for elected office again, much less the fact that he is polling in first place, speaks to how this country views powerful men who use their power to harm others. Despite his commentary during the horny phase of the pandemic, Andrew Cuomo is exactly like Donald Trump, and the fact that our country keeps electing sexual predators shows that we still think these men are more entitled to second chances than their victims are to healing and peace.

But while this primary is in part a case study on male entitlement in politics, it is also part of a larger conversation on electability.

If You Vote For Them, Then They Are Electable…That’s How Elections Work, I Fear

There has been a growing discussion around the impact of gender on electability, or voters’ perception of a candidate’s chances to win. During the 2020 Democratic presidential primary election, Stanford and LeanIn.org conducted a survey

of nearly 1,000 likely Democratic primary voters, the researchers asked a series of questions like “Do you think it will be harder or easier for a woman to win the 2020 election against President Trump, compared to a man?” and “If he/she were guaranteed to win, who would you most want to be the next president?” and provided 12 choices that included all the leading candidates at the time of the survey.

They found that overall, 76% of the surveyed respondents thought that it would be harder for a woman to beat then-president Donald Trump in the general election.

Some of the reasons voters cited for perceiving a woman candidate as less electable included the idea that Americans were not yet ready to elect a woman president and that gender biases in society would hurt her campaign – like being held to a higher standard than a man, dealing with biased media coverage and facing harsher or more effective attacks by the opposition. In sum, many Democratic voters didn’t see it as practical for a woman to run if they wanted their party to win the election.

Moreover, the scholars also saw a clear pattern of voters who, while they may have personally preferred a woman candidate as their party nominee, nonetheless switched their voting intentions towards a male candidate when they perceived the woman candidate to be less electable.

In this primary, we’re seeing a different kind of electability quandary around Zohran Mamdani. Mamdani is currently polling in second place behind Cuomo and is incredibly popular for a variety of reasons, not in the least because his campaign is everywhere on social media. I spoke about this briefly with Ethan Stone, who has been volunteering for Mamdani’s campaign:

Emily: What about Mamdani made you want to get involved with his campaign?

Ethan: Zohran Mamdani’s campaign is the first thing in a long time that’s actually made me feel hopeful about this city and where we’re headed.

For the past few years, I’ve felt increasingly hopeless watching the Democratic Party shift further to the right and prioritize corporate interests more and more. Watching leaders like Eric Adams completely sell out New Yorkers for personal gain, it’s been hard to believe that real change could actually happen.

But Zohran is young, he’s vibrant, and he has a clear, unapologetic vision that actually puts New Yorkers first. Not landlords, not developers, not billionaires. And what I really love is that he has a backbone. He’s not just saying the right things. He’s shown he’ll stand by them throughout his time as an Assemblymember. He hasn’t folded under pressure the way Adams did or the way Cuomo clearly would.

I think some people hear “democratic socialist” and get spooked, but if you actually look at his platform—things like rent freezes, free buses, universal childcare—it’s all incredibly popular and his polling reflects that.

What made me want to get involved is that Zohran isn’t just someone I’m excited to vote for but he’s someone I believe can actually win. That combination has become rare for me. It felt like a real chance to push back against the establishment, and I knew I’d regret it if I didn’t at least try to be part of that. I only moved to the city a few years ago, but volunteering has been a surprisingly great way to meet my neighbors, have meaningful conversations, and feel like I’m actually part of the city instead of just passing through it.

If you’re even a little curious, I really recommend getting involved in these last few weeks before the election. It’s not nearly as intimidating as it seems, and it honestly feels good to know you’re doing something real. Zohran’s social media game is really strong, but the reality is that the largest demographic of voters who actually show up to the polls aren’t choosing candidates based on Instagram stories. They’re making decisions through real conversations, and that’s where canvassing makes a difference.

And if Zohran wins, I really believe it will send a necessary message far beyond NYC. It will show the rest of the country that these kinds of policies are what voters actually want. That people do have the power to push back against the establishment. That grassroots organizing can and does work. I think those are messages the country needs to believe if we’re going to seriously fight back against the current administration in the White House.

A lot has been said about Mamdani’s politics, as Ethan mentioned, as well as the growing generation gap between his supporters and those still riding for Cuomo. As Ross Barkan explained in Intelligencer,

Andrew Cuomo, the former governor and unquestioned front-runner in the June Democratic primary, appears poised to dominate the primary with Democrats over the age of 45. These Gen-X-ers and baby boomers, as the writer Michael Lange points out, form the bedrock of the electorate in the five boroughs. They are regular voters, participating in elections at disproportionately high rates. They tend to either be homeowners or longtime residents; they move less and feel, on the balance, deeply invested in local democracy. For more than a decade, they cast votes for Cuomo, and the polling shows they’re ready to do so again. Cuomo’s myriad scandals—his resignation in 2021 after he was accused of sexual harassment, his management of the pandemic—do not seem to bother them all that much. After four years of Adams-administration chaos, they long for a steadier hand, and a three-term governor with tangible accomplishments does, at the minimum, offer that.

Meanwhile, Mamdani’s appeal to younger voters stems from the fact that life for many New Yorkers doesn’t feel stable at all, regardless of whether Adams’ first stop was always “Instanbul”. As Ethan told me,

Emily: What are some of the most pressing issues you want New York City officials to address?

Ethan: The biggest issue for me is affordability. I’m exhausted by how unaffordable the city has become, and the people I’ve talked to in my neighborhood are burnt out from constantly scrambling just to stay here. Rent keeps going up, grocery prices are insane, and it feels like every part of life in the city comes with a price tag that’s always rising.

Meanwhile, the city keeps catering to landlords and developers instead of the people who actually live and work here. We pay a lot in income tax to live here, and I want to feel like that money is going toward making the city better. I want reliable transportation. I want support for people who need it. We need real rent freezes, stronger tenant protections, and policies that are actually designed to keep working-class New Yorkers in their homes.

It really shouldn’t be this hard to live in the place you call home!

Yet, despite his popularity and Mamdani doesn’t seem electable enough:

What some New York Democratic Party members see as Mamdani’s legislative missteps have given them pause about his ability to govern. “During some of the budget fights, we would be whipping and trying to talk to people,” says a Democratic political operative. “And he was more busy trying to figure out a video to tweet because he couldn’t call anybody, because nobody would pick up his call. He is incredibly charming, but he doesn’t know how to build.” They see him as a show pony, not a workhorse.

“I personally adore him,” says another operative. “I think he’s a sweetheart, but he’s in second place and there’s been nothing beyond just, ‘Alison Roman loves him.’ And it’s like, Okay, but he’s running for fucking mayor of New York City”(X).

It’s this back and forth constantly: Mamdani is popular, and his policies are even more so, but he’s not electable, so therefore he can’t win. It’s particularly maddening to hear all this as he’s compared to Cuomo, for whom electability is a foregone conclusion despite the whole everything about him thing.

I feel like this should go without saying, but candidates are electable if you want to elect them. In the above Stanford study, researchers found that

when voters are presented with evidence showing that women political candidates garner just as much support as men in U.S. general elections, voters’ intentions to support women presidential candidates increased by about 3 percentage points, the researchers’ data showed (X).

Polling, electability politics, and social media aside, if you believe in the future Mamdani sees for the city (“‘There is a myth about this city, one that has persisted for far too long: It’s the lie that life has to be hard in New York…I don’t believe that for a moment’”), then rank him on your ballot. Ranked-choice voting allows you to see and support him, in addition to other candidates.

But if you want to move forward faster, away from a city and a world where Andrew Cuomo can run for a new office as if he didn’t have to resign his last one, then

Do not rank Cuomo on your ballot at all.

I won’t be because I want my elected officials to represent and fight for me, not for a second career after they sexually harassed and assaulted at least 13 women at their last one, and also somehow fumbled Sandra Lee??? I don’t want my mayor to be a loser in addition to being a predator!!!

Before I get into my endorsements (the moment we’ve all been waiting for), I wanted to close out this section with this response from Ethan:

Emily: What is something you wish more elected officials would do?

Ethan: I just wish more elected officials actually listened to their constituents instead of trying to keep their donors happy or play it safe.

It’s so frustrating being told to get behind candidates who talk in vague ideas but won’t commit to the stuff people are actually asking for, like rent freezes, better public transit, cheaper groceries. None of that is radical. It’s popular. But they avoid it because it might upset landlords or rich donors.

And on top of that, we don’t even get real choices most of the time. The party blocks competitive primaries at local and national levels to protect the people in power and we’re supposed to just sit back and take whatever they hand us. And now they’re trying to bring back Andrew Cuomo. Like…seriously? A guy who failed New Yorkers over and over, who resigned in disgrace after multiple allegations of sexual harassment? That’s who they’re throwing their weight behind? It just shows they’re not interested in doing right by people like you and me.

Zohran is different, he’s not part of the establishment. He actually shows up. He’s running on policies people want, he listens, and he’s not afraid to push back when something’s wrong, which honestly shouldn't be rare, but somehow it is.

New York City’s Next Top Democratic Mayoral Candidate

If you’re my father or have ever heard him talk about me, it should come as no surprise that I’m voting in line with my “reprehensible socialist views”4 and will be ranking candidates based on the Working Family Party’s endorsed slate. Of course, everyone should take the time to visit every candidate’s website and read through their key issues and where they stand on the ones that matter most to you.

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Because my nosy ass would want to know this information at the end of a piece like this had anyone else written it, I will be ranking my ballot as follows:

1. Zohran Mamdani

2. Adrienne Adams

3. Brad Lander

4. Zellnor Myrie

5. Jessica Ramos

Each candidate I’ve ranked represents and has fought for the New York City I love, and have all managed to serve in elected office without sexually assaulting anyone on their staff.5 I’m going to continue following each candidate over the next month and will be doing my best to make sure that these candidates, in this order, are who I feel most deserve my vote. If you are a New York City voter, I hope you will join me in this effort. For now, we still live in a representative democracy, so it should be the standard for our elected officials to actually represent us.

Thank you for reading!!!! Remember: voting is always the first step to change, not the last or only step to take!!!

Additionally, if you are an unaffiliated voter but have a vested interest in which Democrat is on the ballot in November, get involved with their campaign!!!! Ethan and so many others have shown us how impactful volunteering is not just on this race but on how we see and live in this city.

New York is amazing, New Yorkers are amazing, and I am endlessly grateful to live here!!!

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