The elections for mayor in New York City and Buffalo could signal the direction of the Democratic Party in the state.
It’s Monday. We’ll take a last look at the campaigns and the candidates. Did I mention that tomorrow is Election Day?
From Buffalo to Brooklyn, the contests voters will decide tomorrow pose fresh tests and create fresh tension about the identity and direction of the Democratic Party in New York.
Eric Adams, the likely next mayor of New York City, has presented himself as both a “pragmatic moderate” and “the original progressive.” A former police captain who fought for reforms from within the system, he disdained the “defund the police” movement. He has said that public safety was a prerequisite to prosperity and has reached out to the city’s big-business community. And he defeated several more liberal candidates in the June primary.
A different face of the Democratic Party has emerged in the closely watched contest for the mayor of Buffalo. India Walton, a democratic socialist, defeated the incumbent, Byron Brown, in the June primary. Brown is now running as a write-in candidate in what has become a proxy battle between left-wing leaders and more moderate Democrats. Walton has referred to Brown as a “Trump puppet” who has become complacent about Buffalo. His campaign has questioned her character and painted her proposals as “too risky,” a message that she countered was fearmongering.
My colleague Katie Glueck writes that power dynamics are now being renegotiated at every level of government. “There’s a battle of narratives in New York,” said State Senator Jabari Brisport, a Brooklyn socialist. “New York is in the midst of finding itself.”
Curtis Sliwa as the Republican in the race
In New York City, Adams’s opponent is Curtis Sliwa, who presents his main qualifications as his decades of patrolling the subways and leading the Guardian Angels, the beret-wearing vigilante group he founded.
What a Sliwa mayoralty would look like is an open question, a question that also trails Adams. Sliwa is a Republican newbie — he registered as a Republican only last year — and when he announced his candidacy, some people wondered whether it was just another publicity stunt.
Attention-getting soon defined Sliwa’s campaign. He went to an apartment building in Fort Lee, N.J., where Adams co-owns an apartment with his partner, to suggest that Adams did not live in New York. On Twitter, Sliwa called Adams’s residency “the biggest unanswered question since Big Foot, Loch Ness Monster & Bermuda Triangle combined.” (Adams has said that his primary residence is a townhouse he owns in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn.)
Sliwa’s tactics were no surprise to those who have followed his career. “For the most part, the person you see in public making bad rhymes before the camera is now the actual person,” said Ronald Kuby, a lawyer who once co-hosted a talk-radio show with Sliwa and is now a trenchant critic. “It’s just one long, desperate and reasonably entertaining cry for attention.”
A likely district attorney who has been a police adversary
Alvin Bragg, who is favored to be the next Manhattan district attorney, spent time last week in a virtual courtroom. He was questioning a police lieutenant about the day that an officer held Eric Garner in a fatal chokehold.
For the last several years, Bragg has represented Garner’s family in their continuing fight for details about what happened before Garner, who was accused of selling untaxed cigarettes, died in 2014. The Garner case underscored some of the messages of Bragg’s campaign. He has said that he will not pursue some low-level crimes.
He has also spoken frequently about police accountability. The district attorney typically works closely with the New York Police Department. Bragg’s involvement in the Garner inquiry — which highlighted a shameful episode for the department — suggested that his relationship with the police is likely to be more adversarial than that of his predecessors.
Where Republicans stand a chance
In some New York City Council races, Republicans are trying to win over voters who cast their ballots for Republicans for president and Democrats in local races. In a race in a Brooklyn district that is home to many Orthodox Jews and Russian and Ukrainian immigrants, Donald Trump Jr. recorded a robocall for the Republican City Council candidate, Inna Vernikov.
“They’re trying to make it about the presidential election,” said Steven Saperstein, the Democrat in the race. “People in this district understand and they know that national elections are one thing, but on the local level you have to vote for the person.”
In Queens, Democrats hope to flip the last Republican-held City Council seat in the borough. The Democrat in the race is Felicia Singh, a teacher who has been endorsed by the left-wing Working Families Party. She is running against Joann Ariola, the chairwoman of the Queens Republican Party.
Voting maps and environmental rights
There’s more on the ballot than the mayoral elections. All 51 City Council members will be chosen in New York City. And five potential amendments to the State Constitution are also on the ballot.
One would redraw the state’s legislative maps, which occurs every 10 years. Among other things, it would cap the number of state senators at 63. Michael Li, a senior counsel at New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice, told my colleague Ashley Wong that the cap was necessary to prevent gerrymandering.
Another ballot measure — a so-called environmental rights amendment — would enshrine a constitutional right to clear air, clean water and a “healthful environment.” The language is vague on just what a “healthful environment” is or how such a standard would be enforced.
Weather
It’s a new week, New York. Enjoy the sunny day in the high 50s, with clouds moving in at night and temps dropping to the mid-40s.
alternate-side parking
Suspended today (All Saints Day) and tomorrow (Election Day).
The latest New York news
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Sexual harassment and assault by detainees are compounding the crisis at Rikers Island.
And in case you missed it …
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Complaint against Andrew Cuomo: Craig Apple, the Albany County sheriff, defended the decision to file a criminal complaint against Cuomo, who resigned as governor in August. Apple said he was confident that the district attorney would prosecute even though Apple had not coordinated the filing with prosecutors. The district attorney, David Soares, has not committed to going ahead with the case.
Apple also rejected accusations that the filing was a “political hit job.”
Cuomo was charged with forcible touching, a misdemeanor that carries a penalty of up to one year in jail, in connection with allegations that he groped a female aide’s breast. Cuomo’s lawyer, Rita Glavin, said he had “never assaulted anyone.” Cuomo is scheduled to be arraigned on Nov. 17.
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Letitia James’s candidacy: James, the New York attorney general who oversaw the inquiry into the sexual harassment claims that led to Cuomo’s resignation, declared her candidacy for governor. She begins the campaign as Gov. Kathy Hochul’s most formidable challenger. Others, including Mayor Bill de Blasio, may throw their hats in the ring, too.
James, the first woman of color to be elected to statewide office in New York, is seeking to become the first Black female governor in the country. As attorney general, she made headlines for suing the National Rifle Association and investigating President Donald Trump. “I’ve sued the Trump administration 76 times — but who’s counting?” James said in the video announcing her campaign.
Hochul, who is from the Buffalo area and is white, was the first governor in more than a century to have deep roots in western New York. Either would be the first woman elected governor.
What we’re reading
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New York’s Irish Arts Center is moving from a former tenement to a $60 million state-of-the-art performance facility.
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Inevitably, the last of the authentic delis have been joined by an increasing number of designer delis.
MetROPOLITAN diary
Discovering schav
Dear Diary:
I was shopping for groceries with my mother at a supermarket in Riverdale. I noticed a dozen or so jars of something called schav lined up against a wall in the Jewish food section.
I had never seen it before. It looked like a greenish vegetable soup.
When we got out to the street, I asked my mother what it was.
Before she could answer a man who was walking in front of us turned around.
“What?” he said, looking me right in the eye. “You don’t know what schav is? You eat it with a cold boiled potato and it’s delicious!”
— Nancy L. Segal
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.
P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.
Melissa Guerrero, Rick Martinez and Olivia Parker contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com.
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