The decision of Mayor Adams to run as independent in the final elections of November has been chosen by nothing more than an intelligent ploy to increase his re -election opportunity.
The candidate for the socialist mayor of Democratic Zohran Mamdani, a member of the Queens Assembly, was typical by characterizing Adams as a “dishonor and dishonored mayor who has put and always put his needs before his.”
But the implications of Adams’s decision have been underestimated in the week that has followed it, lost in a news cycle about wars and presented simply as personal. Adams, until now known as the first executive director of the city to be accused in office, has done something unprecedented and important.
Paul Martinka
He will be the first title mayor to avoid a primary election of the party completely. As a result, he has done much more than simply boosting his own Chans.
He is offering New York a political insurance policy against the threat of an Mayor’s Office of the extreme left that can result from the primary defective system of the city, which blocks the second largest group of independent voters.
It is a system that can allow a low participation choice to assess the city with an executive director who is not representative of the electorate as a whole.
In his announcement of his independent candidacy, Adams offered an abbreviated version of those arguments. As he said, his independent career would give him a chans to “directly appeal to all New Yorkers.”
This simple statement implies a much broader truth: the main electoral system of New York City is an affront to democracy and lacks legitimacy. The closed primary system of the city, which excludes independent voters, deprivation of effective rights to the second largest group of voters in the city to vote in elections with the best contained.
These “non -affiliated voters” represent 23% of the 13 million registered voters from the state of New York. More specifically, there are more than 1 million that are not affiliated in the five districts. They can vote in November, or course, where the Perennene Curtis Sliwa sacrifice lamb is expected to run on the Republican line.
But they are closed from the real elections, the democratic parties of June Primary. It is a system that allows candidates to win and continue to govern the city for multiple terms, thanks to the victories for the first time in the under exchange elections.
Nancy Kaszerman / Zuma Press Wire / Splashnews.com
That is exactly the threat raised by Democratic socialist Mamdani.
In a primary choice in which progressives and union members will be disproportionately, will command a hardcore of loyal voters who could well take him to the victory over the Stringer of Bijders, Soft and Anti-triunfo of sound.
It could succeed over the ex-thrav front corridor. Andrew Cuomo, who can sink as voters, remember his Pandemia-Ire decisions that led thousands of deaths from elderly households.
In the city’s classified election vote system, Mamdani could be second or third in many tickets, and see the votes transferred to it as other candidates are eliminated.
We have a prequel to this movie. It is a new version of how Bill de Blasio became mayor for two terms, after winning his primary matches, with only 81,000 votes of a total of 198,000 cast, defeating the consciousness of this city much more centrist and pragmatic Christine Quinne.
In fact, Adams himself was almost the victim of this system in 2021, when the former old left, the Autal of Blasio, Maya Wiley, surpassed everyone in the field full of people, except Adams and the second place finalist, Kathryn García.
By guaranteeing a place on the electoral ballot in November, Adams offers the city a quality of life insurance policy, protecting against those that could be the low primaries to kidnap the city government. Mamdani, in particular, has ruled out the hiring of more officials of the New York Police.
Adams, through the resource of omitting primary, has increased considerably the chances of a career of November.
He is arguing, in effect, that in an open primary, it would be one of the last two. It is a self -service assumption, but it is not unreasonable for a politician who first entered political life as a registered Republican.
Andrew Schwartz / Splashnews.com
At a minimum, it has ensured that the November elections will not be a walk for a Democrat who manages to win the primary Democrats of Low Giro.
Identally, the exchange of the Adams party should attract attention to the need to reform the main electoral system of the city, an atypical among the big cities.
They are the law in the main democratic strengths, including Chicago and Boston. Such change could be a good Adams policy, but also a civic lesson that New Yorkers should not be discarding or ignoring.
Adams now guarantees a serious competition in November, when many more voters reach the surveys. That should be the New York standard, not an exception.
Howard Husock is a member of internal policy at the American Enterprise Institute
