The 2021 Mayoral Election and Our NEW MAYOR!
The city recently had its 110th Mayoral election in which millions of people, on November 2nd, cast their votes to determine the future of the City for the next 4 years.
In order to have voted, you would have needed to be at least 18 years old, have lived in the city for at least 30 days, been a citizen of the US, and have had no felonies. While none of us can vote right now, in the upcoming years we will have that exciting opportunity.
Normally in order to vote one must have visited a polling booth in some select locations, however, this year, voters were also given the option to mail in an absentee ballot in advance, if visiting a booth in person was not an option. This is incredible because, before covid, mail-in voting was essentially non-existent, as a result, many more people from many more demographics can have a say in public elections.
This year, voting was done by a system of ranked-choice in which one would list their top choices to be mayor rather than just voting outright. This was to ensure that more than two parties would be able to run for office.
Although this was the case, and more parties ended up in the final bracket, there was certainly a clear winner of the election, Eric Adams, who won with over 72 percent of the vote! For reference, the next runner-up, Curtis Silwa, had only 22% of the vote. A list of all the candidates can be found here.
There were, in total, 9 different people that were eligible to have been voted for but, consistent with popular opinion, the two most voted for candidates mentioned previously were of the democratic party(Eric Adams) and the republican party(Curtis Silwa).
So who exactly is Eric Adams and why did he win so much of the vote? For starters, New York City is notoriously democratic so historically speaking this was the most likely person to win of the final 9 candidates.
Eric Adams has a very interesting history. Starting from practically nothing, living in a working-class household, he began to invest himself in community service and would later join the force. He was inspired to join the force ever since having been beaten by police at the age of 15.
He graduated, top of his class, from the police academy and used his influence to co-found the group “100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care” as a way to help combat police brutality and encourage diversity in the force. The initiative instated an Advocacy group to ease racial tensions between the NYPD and the NYC community.
His start in politics really began in 2006 when he was elected into the New York state senate. Later, in 2013, he was elected to be Brooklyn’s borough president and would be their first elected person of color.
Overall the next four years should be interesting for New York, and we should see a lot of interesting and progressive changes to the police force and the city as a whole.
Sources:
https://www.termlimits.com/nine-of-the-ten-largest-u-s-cities-have-term-limits/
https://ballotpedia.org/Mayoral_election_in_New_York,_New_York_(2021)
https://www1.nyc.gov/site/civicengagement/voting/how-to-vote.page
https://www.fairvote.org/rcvbenefits
https://www.brooklyn-usa.org/eric-adams-bio/