In Chaotic Mayor’s Race, It’s All Down to the Absentee Ballots

The Democratic primary for mayor of New York City, now a tight race among Eric Adams, Kathryn Garcia and Maya Wiley, will be decided by absentee ballots.

Fresh off a vote-counting debacle that caught national attention, the chaotic New York City Democratic mayoral primary is moving into a new phase: the wait for absentee ballots. A preliminary, nonbinding tally of ranked-choice votes on Wednesday showed a highly competitive race, with Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, holding a lead of about two percentage points over Kathryn Garcia, a former city sanitation commissioner. Under the ranked-choice elimination-round process, Maya Wiley, a former counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio, finished just behind Ms. Garcia, trailing by fewer than 350 votes. But those results do not account for the roughly 125,000 Democratic absentee ballots submitted, and the race might look different once all eligible ballots have been accounted for.