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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. For those of you who were just listening to the BBC report on the assassination of the president of Haiti, we will open up the phones later in the program for some of you who are Haitian or Haitian American listeners to give your reactions. We'll talk to Gary Pierre-Pierre from the Haitian Times, that's coming up later, but first, yes, it looks like we know who the next mayor of New York City is going to be. After the large majority of the absentee ballot results were announced last night, the associated press projected that Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams has won the democratic primary. You've surely heard this by now.

In overwhelmingly blue New York, Adams is almost certain to defeat Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa in November. There were also winners in other races last night, including four of the five Borough president nominations. My hometown of Queens always has to be different. They did not pick a winner yet, too close to call. Also, for New York City Comptroller, those nominations have been decided. We'll get to all that too with WNYC senior political reporter, Brigid Bergin, who may or may not have gotten any sleep last night while crunching all these numbers. Hi Brigid, welcome back to the show for I guess the final time in mayoral primary season.

Brigid Bergin: Well, it's great to be here, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Let's do some math first. There was a lot of speculation that the absentee ballots could favor Kathryn Garcia and help her catch up to Adams. She was just 15,000 votes behind with 125,000 absentee ballots to be counted, so how did they turn out?

Brigid Bergin: Well Brian, she did pick up some more votes and she shaved that gap down to about just 8,400 votes or one percentage point. Very close, but still just not quite enough.

Brian Lehrer: Not as high a percentage of people voted absentee as in the presidential election last year at the height of the pandemic, but still lots more absentee voting than before the pandemic. Is there anything to learn yet from the patterns of absentee ballots? Is it older people returning more slowly to in-person voting or any other pattern?

Brigid Bergin: Brian, I think that's something we're going to have to dig into in the days ahead when we're really able to take a closer look at the voter rolls once they certify these results. As we will talk about, just getting the numbers has been a challenge over the past two weeks. At this point, the information is still just being presented in terms of results for the candidates. We hope to dig in at a much deeper level in terms of election districts and where the turnout was, and then ultimately, the Board of Elections has committed to releasing what's called the cast vote record.

At that point, we'll really be able to see not just how voters voted, whether it was in-person versus absentee, but we'll be able to see how many voters across the city took advantage of the opportunity to rank their choices, who just opted to pick one candidate, and I think once we are able to look at data at that level, it'll be very instructive in terms of what a rank choice election really means in New York City.

Brian Lehrer: What about the race for second place, even though there's no constellation prize for first runner up when you're running for mayor? Going into yesterday, the margin between Kathryn Garcia and Maya Wiley was tiny, only a few hundred votes out of 800,000 previously counted, what happened there?

Brigid Bergin: Brian, that margin was so narrow, it was giving me anxiety all weekend. I was talking to election lawyers all day Sunday and Monday just because that was well within that half of 1% margin that could potentially trigger a re-count if they decided to do re-counts at elimination rounds. What ended up happening when they pulled those absentee ballots into the mix was Kathryn Garcia showed that her candidacy, despite not having as much institutional support, did have some real strength and she widened the margin over Wiley to 12,000 plus votes or what still was a small percentage, 1.4%, but way up from that 347 votes, we were talking about last week that was giving me intense anxiety.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, and giving people intense anxiety if they were anticipating the prospect of a full hand recount of nearly a million rank choice votes with the one through fives and the everything else. That's not going to be necessary now. Now last I saw early this morning, neither Wiley nor Garcia had conceded to Eric Adams, despite the fact that the AP has called the race, did that change in the last couple of hours?

Brigid Bergin: Nothing official, both Wiley, and Garcia are holding events this morning. Kathryn Garcia will be in Central Park in front of the Women's Rights Monument, where she plans to make a statement just in a few minutes from now. Maya Wiley will actually be up at The Lucerne Hotel on the upper west side. A little bit later this morning I'm going to be heading up there as soon as we finish talking where she will also be making a statement. Certainly, Wiley appeared in front of The Lucerne Hotel many times during this campaign.

It was the site where some homeless men had been housed by the city and really became a flashpoint in the fight over how we address homelessness here in the city.

I expect to hear Wiley talk about the types of inequality that she hopes continue to be addressed here in the city. Both Wiley and Garcia did file the paperwork that would allow them to challenge the election results if there is some information that that campaign or legal experts have to suggest that there could be some irregularity. I don't expect to hear that, but we don't know officially what their statements are going to be at this point.

Brian Lehrer: Having a Keystone Cops Board of Elections is not grounds for a legal challenge I presume.

Brigid Bergin: No. Not unless they really bungled something up. While we know that last week's error, including 135,000 test ballots in that initial rank choice tally, was not their finest moment, they had their weekly meeting of the commissioners yesterday, which was actually their first in-person meeting since before the pandemic. It was actually fascinating. The deputy executive director, Don Sandow, made a very clear apology and said New Yorkers deserve better essentially, that the error was unacceptable, but also wanted to make clear that no votes had been lost, no results had been altered, they were glad that they caught this during a preliminary round.

Then what happened after that, the Republican commissioner from Queens, Michael Michel, proceeded to ask another senior staffer at the Board of Elections, the man who runs the electronic voting systems about why this was a more difficult results period for them because they had less time to essentially review their work and that they were, according to Commissioner Michel, caught in a catch-22 that they were going to get flack for not releasing results if they decided to wait until all the votes were in, and then on the flip side, they released them with less time to quality control them, made an error, and obviously got a lot of flack for that.

Neither of those I think substantiate grounds for a legal challenge unless the campaigns and their observers are going to allege something that we don't know about yet.

Brian Lehrer: Just for another round of dark comedy from the Board of Elections, during yesterday's show, I don't know if you were listening, we mentioned their announcement that they would release these results around brunch time yesterday. We joked that brunch in New York City in the restaurants runs from around 10:00 in the morning till 4:00 in the afternoon, so when exactly should we pour our election return mimosas? Then they did not release anything even by 4:00 and said they would release the results at 7:30. A 7:30 appointment, I'll be watching them, and then they release them a little before seven o'clock.

This is all a small deal in the scheme of things, but it's emblematic of a certain degree of consistent bungling. What was that all about yesterday with the timing?

Brigid Bergin: [sighs] Brian, I think one part of it is it's tough to be the messenger for an agency that you don't have a lot of control over and that has the reputation for not being as consistent as you might like. I think the initial tweet, my sense is intended to be a little tongue in cheek with maybe an idealistic hope that those results would be released during a normal business hour. Then as the day crept on, the board had said that they added an additional layer of manual quality control to ensure that we didn't experience something like we did last week.

Perhaps that was one of the reasons for the delay, but as you said, it doesn't help to increase confidence from the perspective of voters or from the people who cover them or from candidates in campaigns that work with them when they say one thing and then do something different. Even in the latter case where they released the information slightly earlier than they had prepared people for, I think that was intended to help people, but because the message didn't match what they actually delivered, it ended up causing some challenges for people who had to report on it.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we can take your questions about the latest primary results in any race now that almost all the absentee ballots have been counted. 6-4-6 4-3-5 7-2-8-0 with WNYC senior political reporter, Brigid Bergin, or call with your comments on the outcomes, or on the rank choice voting process, do you feel democracy was served by rank choice voting? Did it feel to you like you have more of a voice in this election because of it? Or if you just want to offer public congratulations to Eric Adams, whether you ranked him or not, you can do that too, 6-4-6 4-3-5 7-2-8-0. Candidates generally deserve some of that after winning fair and square.

6-4-6 4-3-5 7-2-8-0, or tweet @BrianLehrer. Brigid, in the final analysis, who was in the Eric Adams winning coalition?

Brigid Bergin: Well, Adams performed very strong across central Brooklyn, Southeast Queens, up in the Bronx, really assembled support among a strong electorate of working-class Black and Latino voters. He described it as a five-Borough coalition. Really he won four of the five boroughs, but when you think about how long Adams has been working to build this coalition, he was in the race the longest, he also had some not insignificant union support, 32BJ, DC 37, the Hotel Trades Council, all unions with pretty strong turnout operations that were definitely sending messages to their members.

It's clear that along with the support he had from elected officials in those different areas, that he was able to connect his message with the voters at the right moment.

Brian Lehrer: How different is his coalition from the de Blasio coalition or the Bloomberg coalition?

Brigid Bergin: Well, there is definite overlap with the de Blasio coalition. Some of the same areas in central Brooklyn, in Southeast Queens, that Adams performed really, really well and de Blasio also performed well in. de Blasio did better in parts of Manhattan. He actually won in the West Village, which was the district that former city council speaker, Christine Quinn, actually represented, but he also picked up some support in Harlem, and then he had a real base because he represented Park Slope in the city council before becoming the public advocate in that brownstone Brooklyn area and added some other communities in Queens to round out his support.

When you look at the Adams support, Manhattan really went very strongly for Kathryn Garcia. She picked up the strongest support among higher-income, higher-educated voters. Maya Wiley then also ate into some of that in areas where we've seen a growth progressive activism. In those areas in Queens, and in Brooklyn where some of the younger more animated political activists are, that is where Maya Wiley performed strongest, even over in the East Village area. It's a different coalition, but I think one of the challenges and opportunities for Adams when he presumably wins in November is presenting a mandate to the city and presenting an agenda to the city that brings together a unifying vision.

I think that is something that he has said that he aims to do.

Brian Lehrer: Right, and Adams has his fans and he has his detractors. I think he sees himself as the political missing link. He straddles police reform and using the police to reduce the number of shootings, someone who gets housing insecurity in New York but is also not a stated enemy of landlords and developers, and other things like that. Now that the campaign is over, where he clearly made some right calls, just in terms of strategy, emphasizing public safety and his own biography, how do you see him pivoting to a more holistic governing approach as opposed to campaigning approach once he presumably gets past the November election?

Brigid Bergin: Well, I think that as you laid out, so much of the Adams campaign was just timed for the moment. As we say, in the analysis of any campaign, the timing really is often everything. It will be fascinating to see where the city is come January of 2022, and to what extent the issues of crime and public safety versus COVID reopening and relief are the dominant issues. He has talked about how there is no recovery without public safety. I think that theme will largely drive the early days of the administration, ensuring that there is a sense of public safety to allow for a full sense of the city's recovery, and reopening, and tourism, and all that comes with a full functioning New York city.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take a rank choice voting math question, I think that's what it is, from Bob in Rego park. Bob, you're on WNYC. Hi there.

Bob: Hey, Brian, I haven't spoken to you in a while. You doing a great job in the report. I'd like to make a statement. I felt as though, which I like Wiley, I like Garcia, I felt as though they both canceled each other out. Adams as a mayor is not going to go after billions of dollars from Cuomo. He's going to be great for people who have money, and we would have been better off if either one of those would have not been in the race, and I'm referring to Wiley and Garcia, we would have our first mayor, and either one of them, I would have been tremendously satisfied. Even though Manhattan went for Garcia, she would have been much better than Adams.

Adams is not going to go and communicate with the governor and help the real people, the poor people in the city. I have money, people have money, but I think that was a big mistake, and either one of them should have bowed out of the race.

Brian Lehrer: Bob, thank you very much. Well, first of all, I'm sure, in fairness to Eric Adams, he would say he certainly is there on behalf of poor people. He grew up poor himself. I mentioned that he won in part I believe because he told his own story, his own biography effectively, and had certainly grew up being poor. His base was working-class, it was not the Manhattan elite who voted much more for Garcia and even for Wiley. There's that in how Eric Adams would at very least defend himself. With respect to Garcia and Wiley canceling each other out, Brigid, it's an interesting question, and I guess it depends how you look at what the "lanes" really were in this race.

Were they progressive and moderate, in which case Wiley is in her own lane separate from Garcia and Adams who are both considered a little more moderate, or maybe there was a woman candidate lane, or I don't know, how do you see it?

Brigid Bergin: I think that you can't ignore how different Garcia and Wiley were as candidates and the positions that they take and the platforms they were running on. I think when you think about it through the lens of rank choice voting, proponents say that one of the benefits is that you don't have to have candidates worrying about canceling each other out. I think in this case that while when Wiley was eliminated Garcia did pick up more of the share of her votes, which could suggest that there may have been people who were voting for women candidates. If you remember the span of this whole campaign, it was difficult for several of the women candidates to break through for a period of time.

Earlier in this race, the campaign was really dominated by Eric Adams, Andrew Yang, and to some extent Scott Stringer, in the early polling. The women candidates had been trailing up to that point. I think they represented very different things, and again, I think when we get a closer look at the cast vote record to see how people did actually rank all of their votes, we will learn more, but I'm not sure I agree with the caller that the two candidates in any way canceled each other out. I think Wiley ran as what ultimately became the standard-bearer for progressives, consolidated support from the progressives but it came very late.

She was not the initial candidate that progressives had backed, Scott Stringer had occupied that lane and had launched his campaign really surrounding himself with some of the city's youngest most progressive state lawmakers. It wasn't until later on when he was confronted by sexual harassment allegations from 20 years ago that some of that support faded away so quickly and created an opening for what at that point was both Maya Wiley and Diane Morales until the Morales campaign faced its own troubles within its organization.

Then it was after that that Wiley picked up the endorsement from Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez. She has a different approach to public safety than Garcia.

I don't necessarily believe that the two of them canceled each other out. I think the fact that they were among the finalists is actually a good thing for the city. We are getting closer.

Brian Lehrer: To having a woman Mayor someday. On the Working Families Party having landed finally on Maya Wiley, here's a tweet from the listener who asks, "Could the Working Families Party run Maya Wiley on their line in November?

Brigid Bergin: In conversations I've had with Working Families Party, people in the past, they've talked about not wanting to be a spoiler. While they do have a ballot line, I think it would be unlikely that they would try to do that and more likely that they would want to support the Democratic candidate. We will be hearing from Wiley later today. If anything changes, we will be sure to let you know.

Brian Lehrer: Sherry in Long Island City you're on WNYC with our senior political reporter, Brigid Bergin. Hi, Sherry.

Sherry: Hi, good morning, Brian. I'm not that happy that Eric Adams won. I will give him a chance for a month or two to see what he does. Maybe six months, but I'm just not excited to hear him say he wants to bring stop and frisk back. He got a tremendous amount of money from the real estate industry. Some of the things that are happening in Brooklyn, particularly their neighborhoods with the Victorian houses, and now finding themselves getting apartment buildings and things built in those neighborhoods because Eric Adams didn't really fight it. The fact that he is talking about or did talk about carrying a gun as mayor, I'm just-- [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: You're skeptical?

Sherry: I'm really skeptical. I voted for Garcia and for Wiley, Wiley first, Garcia second, and I'm a Black woman. I'm a Black woman, I'm gay. I just-- [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: You're not there yet.

Sherry: I am not there as a woman who has Black male relatives who have had issues in Chicago and in Michigan with police to hear a Black man say that he wants to bring that back because it just wasn't used correctly. The police have proven that they cannot use it correctly time and time again, which is [inaudible 00:23:57] lobbied to get rid of it.

Brian Lehrer: Sherry, thank you for your call. From the other side of the ledger, I think Jay in lower Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hi, Jay. Thanks so much for calling in.

Jay: Hi, Brian and Brigid, wonderful coverage as always. I don't know if you recall, I called in during your unofficial poll and expressed my hope that Eric Adams would win and I'm very pleased he did. I think [chuckles] what I said in my call was that the efficiency that I think that people were seeing in Garcia is not necessarily a good thing in city government because everyone has a different case. If the government is good at giving you a violation and then good at being opaque which is the most cost-effective way of dealing with giving people violations and collecting money, it's not necessarily good for constituents that all have different and varied situations.

I felt that Eric Adams has always run such a robust constituent service operation that we're really going to see a good and effective government. I think that the previous caller's concern about the stop and frisk, for example, this is more, in my opinion, that Eric Adams has really been running not just against the other candidates, but against the New York Times and certain media outlets. That's just silliness. When a former police officer says that stop and frisk is a tool [scoffs] that police officers can use, but they can't abuse it, that's different than reinstituting stop and frisk in the way that New York-- [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: That Bloomberg had it. I get your point, and not just when a former police officer, to help make your point, but a former lifetime reformer from within the police department, which Eric Adams was during his career. We will see how that actually turns out. There, from Jay in Manhattan, from Sherry in Queens, a couple of sides of that story from our listeners that frame some of how people will be watching Eric Adams' benefit of the doubt or not, hope or fear, et cetera, as he takes office, presumably, winning in November. I guess we could say a word about that. There will be a general election against Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa. It was never expected to be close with any democratic nominee.

With the tough-on-crime image that Adams cultivated during the primary, Brigid, he especially neutralizes Sliwa's bedrock issue, doesn't he?

Brigid Bergin: He does. I think Sliwa knows that to some extent. He's going to be out in the field again today at the parade for essential workers as well as holding his first press conference in this general election field at the corner of 34th Street and 7th Avenue right by Madison Square Garden, where, of course, he's going to be talking about gun violence in policing. One of the proposals Sliwa has is to use property tax reform as a way to hire more police officers, 3000 additional officers, and that would include taxing places like Madison Square Garden, which currently operates tax-free. As you said, it is a long-shot bid, but it certainly will not be boring. It will be a very colorful campaign between the two of them.

I got one piece of breaking news while we were listening to some of those callers, Brian, from the event with Kathryn Garcia up at Central Park. She says that she has called Eric Adams this morning to congratulate him and she said, "We did not break the glass ceiling." Some initial remarks from Kathryn Garcia who has now officially conceded to Eric Adams and we will be sure to bring you an update from what Maya Wiley says later this morning as well.

Brian Lehrer: So, no lawsuit we know now from Kathryn Garcia to challenge these results in any way. Let's do a little lightning round in our last couple of minutes on other results. The Comptroller primary is over, Brad Lander won, Cory Johnson conceded, and we have apparent democratic nominees in four of the five Borough President races, Vanessa Gibson in the Bronx, Mark Levine in Manhattan, Antonio Reynoso in Brooklyn, and Democrat Mark Murphy and Republican Vito Fossella on Staten Island. Only the Queen's race remains too close to call between Donovan Richards and Elizabeth Crowley.

The three city-wide elected officials will all be manned from Brooklyn, presumably next January, Adams as mayor, Lander as Comptroller, and Jumaane Williams as public advocate. Lander as Comptroller and a progressive, Brigid, could be a real thorn in Adam's side if he chooses to be. Do you know what kind of relationship they have going in as two longtime Democratic Party electeds from Brooklyn?

Brigid Bergin: Well, as you said, they're both from Brooklyn but I think they do have different constituencies who support them. Brad Lander really picked up more support from progressive activists electeds earlier than any other city-wide candidate, and brings a real reform sensibility to his politics. He has also been a strong advocate for police reform and he's been a strong advocate for really using city government as a tool for addressing issues from inequality, but also to engage more people in the political process. I think it will be a very interesting dynamic between the two of them and interesting to see what extent he can use the power of the Comptroller's office to be a check.

Similarly, that's the city council, that will also be a fascinating relationship given what is likely to be one of the most diverse incoming candidate classes we've seen in a very long time. For people who are waking up feeling some angst about the fact that, once again, New York city has not elected a woman mayor or nominated a woman for the mayoral nomination, there is comfort, I think, to be had when you look at the city council candidates who are likely to be nominated, 29 of whom are likely to be women. There was a group that was working called 21 in 21. They've exceeded their goal and many of those women are women of color, many of those women are under 40-years-old.

I think that there is just this interesting divide between potentially someone who has deeper institutional roots in the political system, in the political machines, in city-wide office through Eric Adams, and then this whole new generation of political leaders that are going to serve as his check in the city council, and may make things difficult when it comes to budget negotiations, may be very vocal when it comes to policy disagreements, may be extremely exacting when it comes to oversight of city agencies. It's going to be great to report on.

Brian Lehrer: Maybe a creative tension that will move the city forward. We can at least hope with Eric Adams presumably as mayor come next New Year's Day and a majority female city council for the first time certainly to the left of him as a body and who knows who the city council speaker will be, that's going to be a very interesting power spot to see who emerges in it. WNYC senior political reporter, Brigid Bergin, we will cover all of it together, so talk to you soon.

Brigid Bergin: Thanks, Brian.

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