Pizza and Politics: 2021 Election for Mayor

Clyde Dwyer, ‘21

Election season is over. After months of infantile election lawsuits from the Trump campaign, a violent insurrection on the Capitol building, and the Senate turning blue for the first time in a decade, the frenzy of the election year has seemed to calm down.

Not in New York City, though. The first hurdle in the race for mayor has passed, with Andrew Yang’s abysmal pizza taste being chastised. Although nothing can top Mayor Bill De Blasio eating pizza with a fork and knife, the first pizza scandal indicates that the race for voters will head to the polls on June 22nd for Democratic and Republican primaries and on November 2nd to cast votes for the next mayor of NYC. However, due to NYC reliably voting blue, it is almost guaranteed whoever wins the primary will win the general. Although the primaries are only 6 months away, the list of candidates is crowded, with 34 in the running, according to the New York City Campaign Finance Board. 

The sprawling cast of candidates includes front runners Scott Stringer, the current city comptroller; Andrew Yang, former Democratic presidential candidate; Maya Wiley, New School professor and counsel to De Blasio; Eric Adams, the first Black Brooklyn Borough president, and former State Senator.  There is also Paperboy Prince, former Congressional candidate and rapper. Quanda Francis, who “wants to utilize Machine Learning” in NYC public school classrooms. And Curtis Sliwa, the founder of Guardian Angels, a crime-prevention nonprofit, and the only prominent Republican candidate. These candidates are only the tip of New York’s political iceberg and a sole front runner has yet to emerge.

The scant polling so far indicates that New Yorkers are not throwing their support behind any one candidate. Only two candidates have garnered above 15% support in the poll by Public Policy Polling from mid-December, Andrew Yang with 17% and Eric Adams with 16%. About 40% of New Yorkers polled were undecided. Perhaps it is early in the race and the variety of candidates is too large or perhaps voters are fatigued from the past election cycle. Whatever the explanation, NYC’s custom of holding mayoral elections one year after presidential elections has drawn depleted turnout in the past. 

In 2016, 1,007,161 registered Democrats voted in the presidential primary between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, making up about 32% of the turnout. One year later, in the Democratic primary for mayor, only 437,517 Democrats voted, making up a meager 14% turnout. This trend continued in the general elections for president and mayor. 56% of eligible New Yorkers voted in the presidential election of 2016; only 25% of New Yorkers voted in the mayoral election of 2017. While the quirk of holding mayoral elections in off-years has the effect of lowering voter turnout, the 2021 election has a change that will ensure more accurate results.

Ranked-choice voting will be used for the first time in NYC during the June primaries. Also known as “instant-runoff,” the new system allows voters to rank candidates in order of preference, and involves calculating the 2nd and 3rd place choices of voters until a candidate with more than 50% of the vote emerges. In a race with 34 candidates, which hopefully will slim down to something more manageable for voters, such a system ensures that the wishes of the voters are genuinely accounted for.

What do NYC voters wish for? In a non-pandemic year, voters may wish for trains to run faster. This year voters will hope the trains continue to run at all. Covid-19 has been especially difficult for NYC, with over 520K cases and over 25K deaths. The pandemic has laid bare systemic inequities in healthcare, education, and housing. According to the New York Times, the virus was twice as deadly for Black and Latino residents than White residents. The Times also reported that about 420,000 residents –– mostly from the city’s wealthier neighborhoods like the Upper West Side and TriBeCa –– left between March 1 and May 1, including Andrew Yang. Yang has recently come under fire on social media for a comment defending his decision to relocate to his 2nd home upstate, “can you imagine trying to have two kids on virtual school in a two-bedroom apartment and then trying to do work yourself?” Many New Yorkers did not have to imagine that scenario: they lived it. Other candidates besides Yang are tasked with similar challenges: How much of a New Yorker are you and how in tune are you with the politics of today?

Over the next 6 months, candidates will have to answer these questions in their own way. Whether that is posing inside of a bodega in front of cameras or addressing the needs and concerns of various communities through substantive policies. Whether the candidate is a Wall Street Executive, an ex-NYPD member or the current sanitation commissioner for the city (Raymond Maguire, Eric Adams, and Kathryn Garcia). For a city that has more people than 40 other U.S. states, navigating the messy bureaucracy and demands of voters will be no easy task for the next mayor.

Most importantly, the next mayor of the city cannot eat pizza with a fork and knife.