How I'm voting in the NYC mayoral election
and why you should care, even if you're not a New Yorker (ahem, like me)
Last week marked my 10 year anniversary living in New York City, so according to the lore I’ve always heard, I’m now “officially” a New Yorker.
I have always wanted to live in New York. As a teenager, I dreamed about it: I applied early decision to Columbia (womp), got rejected (womp x2), and spent the next 7 years of college outside Chicago and then bouncing around for campaigns, hoping I’d find an excuse to move here one day.
When the Hillary for America campaign announced that HQ would be in Brooklyn Heights, I felt like it was fortuitous: I could both work to fulfil a dream of electing the first woman president (womp x3) and live in the only place I’d ever felt like I could truly exhale in.
I stayed here after 2016, stuck it out through COVID, and got married here — literally, we said our vows on the roller rink in Prospect Park and a view of the skyline is illustrated on our ketubah — then had my two kids here. We plan to stay here come hell, high water, or true financial distress.
I love New York in all the cliche and trite (but true!) ways. I love the anonymity of the city — unlike DC, where as a political operative, I feel like I’m always stuck doing “nonconsensual networking,” I love being one of eight million people here, just co-existing, riding the same subway, complaining about the same bullshit.
I love that I don’t need to own a car and that I get to be a little smug about that. I love that as I write this from an airplane, we’re going to land at LaGuardia in a bit, and that since I’m sitting on the left side, I’ll get the kind of view of the skyline that makes you feel like you’re living inside a movie.
I love the kind of bop-around-the-city days I used to have before kids, where I could visit three entirely different neighborhoods and live what felt like three fully distinct lives in a single outing — and I love that now that I have kids, the city feels small but never claustrophobic. Our 30-minute-walk radius includes at least four playgrounds, two museums, a library with a great children’s section, multiple grocery stores that my toddler can run screaming through the aisles in, and anytime we leave our apartment, we casually run into people we know. It’s home.
I love being a New Yorker, and I love that as a New Yorker, I feel entitled to having strong opinions about the upcoming mayoral election.
(But also, you don’t need to have lived here a decade to have an opinion! No matter how long you’ve lived here, you can and should care, and should register to vote accordingly!!)
And whether or not you’re a New Yorker, if you want to stop the GOP from taking even more power, you should have an opinion, too.
Because here’s the thing: Cities becoming unaffordable for normal people is a huge fucking problem for Democrats.
Zooming out a bit, just in case you’re not a professional political operative who thinks about this shit regularly: Every ten years, America does a census to count the number of people who live in each place (among other things.)
Then states (either state legislatures or independent redistricting commissions) use those census numbers to redraw congressional districts — as populations shift between states, the number of members of Congress from a state might go up or down each decade.
The number of members of Congress from a state determines how many votes it has in the Electoral College. (For example: New York gets 28 votes in the EC: 26 for our 26 House members and 2 more for our senators.)
Right now, based on 2024 population estimates, New York is expected to lose two members of Congress (and two EC votes); CA will lose 3 — and a whole bunch of red places including Florida and Texas will gain representation.
This leave us with a map that is simply really really hard for a Democrat to win in 2032.
That might feel like a huge downer. But the good news is this population change and ensuing political outcome is not inevitable.
There are lots of things we can and must do to solve for it — expand the battlegrounds by building in-state infrastructure, recruit more good candidates in red and purple states, invest more in census outreach, etc, etc — but one priority in the short-term needs to be mitigating population loss in blue states, which has primarily been driven by people moving from expensive places to cheaper ones.
And one of the many reasons blue cities are expensive is because Democratic state and local leaders in these places have broadly failed to take concrete action to tackle the affordability crisis, especially on issues like housing and childcare.
(This is partially why the abundance agenda has captured the discourse lately — it presents a lens through which to consider policies that include building more, building faster, and directly affecting cost of living and quality of life for people. I dig it!)
In conclusion: Low key/high key, the NYC mayoral election is one of the most important elections of 2025, and I wish more national and, hell, more local eyes were on it.
A quick explainer on how the mayoral election works
Again, in case you’re not plugged in here, I’ll explain:
Normally, the NYC mayoral election is determined in the Democratic primary, which this year, will happen on June 24th.
The primary (and only the primary!) is ranked-choice voting. New Yorkers registered as Democrats will show up at the polls and rank our favorites, 1 thru 5 — then votes will be counted in an automatic run-off style.
The candidate who gets the lowest number of #1 votes in the first round is eliminated, then all the ballots who had that loser as #1 get retabulated, taking those voters’ #2 choice into account, then so on and so forth.
Ranked choice voting presents fascinating questions around strategy for the campaigns. Do you build coalitions? Do you do co-endorsements? How do you balance your desire to bring down your opponent with your need to win their voters over as a #2 or #3 ranking?
2021 was the first year we did it this way, and arguably Eric Adams only won because of this process — he only got 30% of the votes in the first round, and ultimately eked out a 7000-ish vote margin over Kathryn Garcia. (#GarciaGang, rise up.)
It was new! Candidates were still figuring out a ranked choice strategy and there was a lot of voter education to do. This time around, I think we’ve gotten a little better at it — we’ve seen lots of organizations do multi-candidate endorsements and intentional creation of permission structures for folks to have multiple candidates they like (as I do below.)
Because the city is predominantly made up of Democrats (even with the rightward shift of 2024), whoever wins the Democratic primary ultimately ends up as mayor.
However, as of yesterday, Eric Adams has announced that his insane corruption and criminal behavior has, uh, prevented him from fully engaging in the election or some bullshit like that, so he’ll be running instead as an independent in the general election in November.
Adams wasn’t going to win the primary — the dude has a 20% approval rating at best, and he was barely raising money— and I don’t think his independent campaign in November will save his ass either, but who knows.
That being said, since he won’t be on the ballot in June, that means our focus can be fully on one imperative: Stopping Andrew Cuomo.
Fuck Andrew Cuomo.
There are approximately one million reasons why Andrew Cuomo cannot and must not win — the TLDR is he’s a bad person who was a bad governor and would be a bad mayor. Among other things, he let people die during COVID because he didn’t want to give de Blasio a win; he sexually harassed scores of women; he is responsible for GOP control of the state senate for a decade; he made (and had to return) millions of dollars off a book-deal around COVID that he used state resources to write; he fundamentally does not like New York City; he doesn’t ride the subway; he won’t prioritize building more housing or making childcare affordable; and he doesn’t actually want to push back on Trump.
He’s just a man having a midlife crisis now that he’s out of power, and he’s looking to work out his issues while on the taxpayers’ payroll.
Cuomo would be a shitty, dangerous leader. Call me crazy but actually, we don’t have to recycle the same old pieces of shit politicians until they or we die! We can do better.
Which gets us to: How I’m voting (as of right now)
With a few months to go until election day, I’m still making up my mind about the exact order of my ballot and my mind is open to being changed — not by you yelling or angrily @’ing me to support your candidate, nor by you telling me I’m a bad person for my opinions — but right now, here’s where I’m at…
(Note before I get into this: All this is just my personal opinion! Run for Something isn’t endorsing in this race — none of the candidates are eligible anyway. We do have a bunch of great people running for city council though!)
#1: Zellnor Myrie
Full transparency, I’ve known Zellnor since my organization endorsed him in his 2018 campaign for state senate (against a Democratic incumbent/Cuomo/Adams ally who was caucusing with Republicans to ultimately give the GOP control of the state senate — you can read more about the IDC here; it was completely inane.)
He was my state senator for a few years until I moved neighborhoods; I volunteered on his first campaign and made calls on his behalf in his field office, sitting right next to his mom, who was speaking in Spanish about her smart and talented son as she called voters.
Zellnor’s just the best. He’s 38 years old, a lawyer and son of immigrants from Costa Rica who lives in the same neighborhood he grew up in, riding the city bus to and from school.
In Albany, Z’s helped pass laws to guarantee abortion access in NY, gotten us tougher gun control laws, brought early voting to NY, and has been a fierce advocate for affordable housing, among other things.
His mayoral campaign is focused on two of the things I’m personally most passionate about, since combined they take up more than half our monthly expenses: Housing and childcare.
Zellnor is the most unabashed YIMBY candidate, with an ambitious and detailed plan to build more than 1 million new homes across the city — that’s the big-swing vision we badly need (for comparison, NYC built barely 33k new units in 2024…)
He’s also got a plan for creating free aftercare for all kids in public school from 3k thru to graduation. As we prep for our toddler to enter public 3k in the fall, I am flabbergasted at how much aftercare will continue to cost us. Cheaper than daycare, for sure, but not free! (He’s got other plans on his website, too, if you want to peruse them.)
Zellnor’s interview with the NY Editorial Board — a group of local journalists and politicos who are currently filling the gap the NYT created when they decided not to endorse in local elections…. — was really impressive. It’s worth reading/listening to.
I want competent, no bullshit governance that’s focused on making NYC a place people — especially families — can stay and thrive. That’s Zellnor, to a T.
#2: Zohran Mamdani
If you’re remotely political engaged online, you’ve probably seen Zohran Mamdani’s content — he’s making campaigning fun again!
Zohran is a 33 year old state assemblymember from Queens and a proud DSA member who’s done some great work in the state assembly for public transit and climate issues especially.
The reason I’m not putting him first is policy-focused — while he’s got some good ideas, perhaps counter-intuitively, I wish his campaign proposals were even more ambitious.
Freezing the rent is a good tagline but not a long-term solution for solving our housing crisis and his build plan only proposes 200k new units. Free buses is good, but to solve the public transit problem, we need to (among other things) just run a fuckton more buses and build more subways. His childcare plan focuses on free care for kids under 5, which would be incredible, but he doesn’t solve the “school ends at 2 and work ends at 5” problem for the other 13 years kids are in school. I like the vibes, I just want more!
But/and: I LOVE the way he’s campaigning. His social media game and media strategy is fantastic. His approach and desire to fight-fight-fight is spot-on for this moment. His campaign is bringing new volunteers and hopefully new voters into the process at a moment when we badly need new people engaged.
I love that people are excited about him, and I hope that enthusiasm lasts.
He’s currently polling second in the race (although around this time in 2021, Andrew Yang was in first and Eric Adams was in a distant second, so who the fuck knows what polling means anymore).
Regardless, the Cuomo team is seeing Zohran as a threat, and I love that, too.
My current plan is to rank him second on my ballot. That means if Zellnor gets eliminated at any point in the process, my ballot will count for Zohran. (So you don’t have to yell ZOHRANNNNN at me, okay? I’m ranking him. That’s what you want! Don’t be annoying.)
#3-#5: TBD
I’m still thinking about who I’m going to rank for the rest of my ballot. In all likelihood, my #3 will be current city comptroller Brad Lander, a deeply thoughtful progressive from Park Slope who has proven he’ll fuck up Trump’s shit.
My ballot will also likely include Speaker Adrienne Adams (even though she’s too pro-car for my personal preferences). I don’t know yet who will be my #5. As I said earlier, I reserve the right to change my mind.
FWIW, if you’re still ruminating too, take your cues from the New York Working Families Party, which is endorsing Zellnor, Zohran, Brad, and Speaker Adams in their initial round of recommendations.
No where on my primary ballot will I rank Andrew Cuomo, and you don’t have to, either.
You don’t have to fill out all five slots. You don’t have to put him on there, even as #4 or #5.
If you don’t want Cuomo to be mayor, don’t put him on your ballot. It is that simple. Tell your friends! Rank whoever you like, just leave the asshole off it.
And I beg of you, especially if you live in/near NYC, get involved in this election.
Because our state is not competitive in the presidential elections, too often political New Yorkers get sucked into doing stuff in ~the battleground states~ — donating to the flashy races in Wisconsin or Michigan, taking buses to PA to knock doors, whatever.
The only people or groups who’ve historically deeply engaged in city elections have been either the wealthy special interests and business owners with $$ at stake, the local activists who have the time to dedicate to their pet issues, and the truly crazy people.
Turnout has sadly been low in the last decade’s worth of mayoral primaries. In 2013, Bill de Blasio won the primary with only 282,344 votes out of 691k cast — in 2021, Adams ultimately won with 404k votes out of about 1 million total ballots.
In a city of 8 million people, that’s basically nothing. It sucks. (I’m not sure I’d call this a fully responsive democracy within NYC!) But one way we can fix that: Show up and keep showing up.
I write all this down and share it with you, even though you may not care, because after ten years, I love it here and I want to fight for this place so that I can afford to stay here.
I want my kids to grow up here and experience the same amusement I get when I go other cities, use google maps to look up directions, see “oh it’s a 20 minute walk!” and then end up accidentally trying to cross two highways as a pedestrian to get where I’m going.
I want to retire here and be one of the older women who walk the loop in the park every morning alongside a sniffy dog as we get our steps in.
I get that New York is not for everyone.
But it’s absolutely for me. And if we want to be a place for anyone who wants to call it home, we’ve got to elect ourselves a leader who will make that possible.
Two book recs:
Three Days in June by Anne Tyler - Gail, a grumpy middle aged socially awkward woman, is about to celebrate her daughter Debbie’s wedding weekend when her ex-husband shows up unannounced at her home with a cat, needing a place to stay. Then Debbie reveals, hmm, maybe not all is well with her husband-to-be. Gail works through it and her own complicated feelings about marriage over the course of the weekend. I liked but did not love this as much as everyone else did, tbh. It’s a quick read though, and mostly pretty sweet.
Say You’ll Remember Me by Abby Jimenez - Not the usual kind of romance/rom-com from Abby, tbh — much sadder! Xavier is a hot but grumpy vet; Samantha is a fun internet marketer — they meet when Samantha rescues a tiny kitten that needs butthole surgery. (Seriously.) They fall for each other fast, except whoops, the next day she’s moving to CA to care for her mom with dementia, and Xavier can’t quite leave Minnesota for extenuating circumstances. The romance is sweet (albeit mostly PG-13); the true emotional stakes are around Samantha’s caregiving and her family. Also a quick read; I mostly finished this on the plane.
Other reading recs:
The millennial redemption era is here — in part thanks to Gen Z watching Girls for the first time. [Embedded]
I’ve really liked
’s series breaking down myths about the politics of Gen Z — she calls it a reality check, which is an apt title! [Part 1 and Part 2]What’s it like being a girl in America? [i-D]
While I don’t do the laundry in our home, I do handle all the other buying/sorting/moving-from-storage-to-drawer-to-the-giveaway-box tasks related to the girls’ clothes. So yeah, this hit:
“The truth is, when you’re daydreaming about becoming a mom and you’re nesting with all those little outfits and you’re wandering through Target touching all the tiny baby socks, you can’t see ahead to the actual work of all those cute things. And that’s OK. Maybe we’re not supposed to. Because then who would buy all of the tiny sweaters with ears on the hood that will only fit your baby for two days? Those pictures you texted the grandparents of your baby in their first snowsuit (but you live in Florida), that dopamine rush of finding the perfect first-day-of-kindergarten outfit (that they screamed about wearing), that guilt that maybe you are solely responsible for fast fashion and fabric piling up in landfills (you’re not)... it’s motherhood. And may it always be this fun and messy and overwhelming and lovely.” [Romper]
Would love a similar take on races in CA. Your analysis of how we’re screwing ourselves is dead on, but I don’t think many people connect a mayor or county supervisor race to loss of national voting power. Thank you for opening my eyes!
Hi Amanda, someone forwarded me your excellent piece in response to my post: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7313666994631786497/
Not sure if you're plugged in with the DREAM push or this ABC PAC, but happy to make intros :)
Tom