NYC Primary Wrap-Up

Well, it's over, or at least it's the beginning of the end. The final results of the NYC muncipal primaries were released yesterday, and now we know the winners. Here are the primary results for Mayor, Comptroller, Borough President, and City Council. (The current Public Advocate easily won back in June.)

Technically none of these "winners" have won anything yet -- they still need to triumph in the General Election in November. However, political reality being what it is, most of the Democratic primary winners in the Bronx, Manhattan, Queens and Brooklyn will win in the general as will most of the Republican primary winners in Staten Island. 

A few interesting observations: the Bronx will get its first female Borough President with Vanessa Gibson; former Congressman Vito Fosella, who left office in 2008 after being busted for DWI which lead to revelations that he had a secret second family, won the Staten Island GOP BP primary (the party of family values in all its glory); Brooklyn city councilman Brad Lander won the Democratic Comptroller primary which means that, if Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams (who won the Democratic Mayoral primary) wins in November, all three city-wide elected officials will be from Brooklyn. This will be an historic moment meaning, a real change in the political gravity of this town, since no one from Manhattan (or anywhere else) will hold city-wide office. 

And yes, the big news is that former cop and Brooklyn BP Eric Adams won the mayoral primary by a whisker -- something like 8,000 votes. I'd been pulling for Kathryn Garcia, and she came damn close, but here we are. Now Adams faces Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa in the General Election -- two colorful, outrageous personalities competing to run the country's largest metropolis and police force.

I can't pretend to be too excited about this choice for mayor -- both candidates seem problematic to me for many reasons -- but obviously Adams is vastly preferable to Sliwa. In some ways this mayoral election will be the battle of the tough guys, a brawl of two men who have literally patrolled the streets of this city. In some ways, they have more in common than not. 

New York City is writing its next chapter. 

P.S. Two years ago I was at an event where Eric Adams gave a speech and he "invited" the office to join him "at City Hall when I'm your mayor." Looks like he was on to something.