Adams Assaults Garcia as Ballot Exhibits They Lead Mayoral Subject

The front-runner within the race for mayor of New York Metropolis, Eric Adams, took purpose at his rival Kathryn Garcia on Monday because the marketing campaign entered its last week and a brand new ballot confirmed that the 2 candidates had been the main contenders.

Mr. Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, clearly sees Ms. Garcia as a menace: He held a information convention with sanitation employees on Monday to attract consideration to allegations that ladies and minority employees on the metropolis company acquired unequal pay. Ms. Garcia ran the Sanitation Division till final 12 months, when she resigned to run for mayor.

Ms. Garcia, for her half, declared the mayoral contest a two-person race and defended her file.

“I assume the mudslinging has began,” she stated at a senior heart in Manhattan. “So I assume he is aware of that we’re in a two-person race.”

She stated she had left the Division of Sanitation extra equitable than she had discovered it.

“I elevated the variety of chiefs and leaders within the division who’re folks of shade by 50 %,” she stated.

Early voting started in New York Metropolis over the weekend forward of the first election on June 22.

Within the ballot, conducted by the Marist Institute for Public Opinion, Mr. Adams had 24 % assist, adopted by Ms. Garcia with 17 % and Maya Wiley, a former counsel to Mayor Invoice de Blasio, with 15 %. Andrew Yang, a 2020 presidential candidate who had as soon as been thought-about the front-runner, fell to fourth place with 13 %.

Underneath the town’s new ranked-choice voting system, Mr. Adams would win with 56 % after 12 rounds, whereas Ms. Garcia was second with 44 %. The ballot was carried out between June 3 and June 9 and had a margin of error of three.8 %.

At Mr. Adams’s information convention, held close to a sanitation enforcement facility on Flushing Avenue in Queens, he criticized Ms. Garcia’s administration of the town’s sanitation system and stood with workers from the division who criticized her for pay fairness points.

“I’m not throwing grime on anybody,” Mr. Adams stated. “We’re operating to be the chief government of this metropolis, and the query have to be requested of these of us who’ve earlier expertise in authorities, earlier expertise in different professions, are you going to run the town the best way you have got really carried out your actions in your different career?”

Mr. Adams additionally criticized Ms. Garcia’s management of the New York Metropolis Housing Authority, the town’s public housing company.

“For those who’re a New Yorker that states you’re happy with how NYCHA has been run over time, then she’s the kind of supervisor you need,” he stated. “For those who imagine you’re happy with the cleanliness of our metropolis, then she’s the kind of supervisor that you really want.”

Philip Seelig, an lawyer for the Sanitation Division enforcement brokers, filed a criticism with the Equal Employment Alternative Fee in February and plans to file a class-action lawsuit. The brokers, who’re largely girls and nonwhite, obtain much less pay and decrease pension advantages than the largely white and male sanitation police, Mr. Seelig stated.

“She will be able to’t flip a blind eye to what occurred in her company when she was operating it, and she will’t anticipate to be a greater mayor than she was a awful commissioner,” he stated.

Earlier Monday, Ms. Garcia visited a senior heart on the Higher East Facet of Manhattan. Requested how she would body the selection for voters between herself and Mr. Adams, Ms. Garcia forged herself as a seasoned public servant reasonably than a politician and implied that Mr. Adams owed payback for political favors.

“That is about expertise: If you take a look at the borough president, he runs a hundred-person store,” she stated. “I run a ten,000-person store and ship companies each day to New Yorkers.”

“He’s been making offers and getting favors,” she added. “, I’ve simply been serving the town and exhibiting up.”

Later within the day, Ms. Garcia, who’s vying to develop into New York Metropolis’s first feminine mayor, commented on the ballot as she greeted store house owners on Avenue P within the Midwood part of Brooklyn.

“This confirms it,” she stated. “We’re in it to win it, and it’s time for a girl.”

Ms. Wiley, who has gained momentum after endorsements from progressive teams and Consultant Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, voted on Monday at Erasmus Corridor Excessive Faculty in Flatbush, Brooklyn, together with her longtime accomplice, Harlan Mandel.

“That is a particularly emotional second for me,” Ms. Wiley instructed reporters afterward, standing in entrance of a gaggle of marketing campaign supporters who had marched behind her to the polling place.

“I’ve by no means run for public workplace earlier than,” she added, “and to go in and stroll into the highschool the place my accomplice’s father went to highschool and to see my identify on the poll is an expertise that could be very onerous to explain. And it was very transferring.”

Mr. Yang held an occasion in entrance of Metropolis Corridor on Monday to announce he had been endorsed by the Captains Endowment Affiliation, the union that represents police captains. Mr. Adams is a former police captain, and Mr. Yang stated it was important that those that had labored with Mr. Adams for years selected Mr. Yang as a substitute.

“This to me ought to inform New Yorkers all that they should learn about Eric Adams and his management,” Mr. Yang stated.

Mr. Yang stated it was vital for the mayor to have a relationship with the police, in distinction to Mayor Invoice de Blasio, who has struggled to get together with officers.

“This metropolis wants the police,” Mr. Yang stated, including that he would additionally rebuild belief between the police and communities of shade.

On the Adams information convention, Ydanis Rodriguez, a metropolis councilman and supporter, emphasised that Mr. Adams can be the town’s second Black mayor and stated Mr. Adams would be sure that streets within the “poorest neighborhood are as clear as Park Avenue and seventy fifth Avenue.”

Mr. Rodriguez additionally stated a number of instances — in English and Spanish — that Ms. Garcia was not Latina, regardless of her final identify.

“Kathryn Garcia no es una Latina,” Mr. Rodriguez stated.

Ms. Garcia is white and doesn’t declare to be Latina, although her ex-husband is of Puerto Rican descent and he or she has referenced the truth that her kids are half Puerto Rican.

After the information convention ended, Mr. Adams returned to make clear to a reporter that he didn’t say that Ms. Garcia was not Latina.

“I wish to be clear that it’s not my quote that Kathryn will not be Latino,” Mr. Adams stated.

Katie Glueck, Michael Gold and Anne Barnard contributed reporting.