Eric Adams has jumped ahead of Andrew Yang in the New York City mayoral race, a new poll shows.
A little over two weeks ahead of the Democratic primary, Adams, the Brooklyn Borough President and former New York Police Department officer, is ahead of his rival by six points, according to the Spectrum News NY1/ IPSOS poll conducted in late May and released Monday.
Per New York Post, Adams has the support of 22 percent of liberal voters compared to Yang at 16 percent.
As TheGrio previously reported, the six other New York City mayoral candidate besides Adams and Yang are former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Shaun Donovan; former NYC Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia; former Citigroup vice-chairman Ray McGuire; nonprofit executive Dianne Morales; New York City comptroller Scott Stringer; civil rights lawyer and professor Maya Wiley.
Garcia reportedly scored 15% in the survey, Stringer was picked by 10% of Democrats likely to vote polled, and progressive lawyer Maya Wiley got 9%, per the report. In April’s poll, Adams polled at 9 percent behind Yang.
“Clearly, Eric Adams has the momentum in this race, driven by everyday New Yorkers who agree Eric can deliver a safer, fairer, more prosperous city for all,” Evan Thies, Adams’ campaign manager, previously said.
Yang announced his mayoral run back in December 2020. The New York City mayoral candidates participated in the first debate for the election season in May. During the debate, Adams accused Yang of failing to credit Black women organizers like Stacey Abrams for the Democrats’ success during the general election, the Guardian reports.
Before the debate, Adams called out Yang for allegedly copying his proposals to combat gun violence in the city with more plainclothes police and an anti-violence unit, according to the New York Daily News.
More recently, Adams fired back at Miami Mayor Francis Suarez for suggesting New Yorkers would greatly benefit in Florida because of the state’s low taxes and affordable homes.
“Our arms are open in Miami,” the mayor said Sunday during an appearance on WABC 77’s The Cats Roundtable. “It’s a two-hour flight. You’re going to save a tremendous amount on cost of living. You’re going to save a tremendous amount on taxes. You’re going to have the best quality of life, and be able to buy property at a fraction of the price.”
Adams wasted no time in responding to Suarez’s statement, New York Post reports.
“I say to the Miami mayor, give me one year and people will be fleeing Miami to come here because this is going to be a business city, a business-centric city, an affordable and fair and end-income inequality [city],” Adams said.
“We are going to keep our residents here and businesses here,” said the mayoral hopeful.
“I have to say,” Adams added. “We have to get back in the mode of competing.”
Civil rights attorney Maya Wiley also responded to Suarez’s snub of New York.
“I’m going to rebut it by making sure that nobody has to spend more than 30 percent of their pay on rent,” Wiley said at a Midtown rally on Saturday, where she was endorsed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
“No other city has done rent subsidies like we’re gonna do,” she added. “No other city has invested in the number of teachers we’re gonna invest in. No other city has said we’re gonna have universal health care, and no other city is New York City.”
Meanwhile, Yang claimed Monday that his campaign’s own polling “numbers show something different” and that the race is “pretty much anyone’s race among the top candidates right now,” he said on PIX 11.
The new poll was conducted from May 3 to May 17 and included responses from 906 Democratic voters after pollsters conducted 3,249 interviews. Thirty-one percent of the participants hail from Brooklyn, 26 percent from Queens, 28 percent from Manhattan, and 3 percent from Staten Island, according to the report.
The New York City mayoral primary will be held on June 22, with early voting beginning Saturday, June 12.
*theGrio’s Sytonia Reid contributed to this report.
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