AP’s Jonathan Lemire Explains What on Earth is Happening in New York’s Chaotic Mayoral Race


Associated Press White House reporter Jonathan Lemire — who cut his teeth in journalism covering New York politics at the Daily News — is here to break down the current chaos that is the NYC mayoral race.

Lemire spoke to Mediaite editor Aidan McLaughlin on this week’s episode of The Interview podcast about the Democratic primary in New York, which is almost certain to determine who will replace current Mayor Bill de Blasio.

“Let’s start with this. It’s a mess,” Lemire said.

The reason for this chaos, Lemire explained, is that this is the city’s first time using ranked choice voting, whose “proponents say leads to a more accurate choice… and then a better representation of what people want.”

Lemire added that “it is slower,” especially considering this is the first time that this electoral process has been used in the nation’s largest city.

On election night, Eric Adams, former police officer and Brooklyn Borough President, seemingly had “a fairly commanding lead when when it was just tallied up.” Lemire also noted that this was just when the “first choice ballots were collected.”

However, this week Adams’ lead was cut down dramatically thanks to Kathryn Garcia, the former sanitation commissioner, as more waves of votes were counted.

“The New York City Board of Elections, which is actually largely run by the state, has long been an emblem of incompetence,” Lemire said, adding they “messed up the results and inadvertently put out, including in the tally these test results, dummy results they use to test the system.”

“After twenty four hours of that,” Lemire said New York City’s electoral process became “a national joke.”

Regardless of the error, Garcia has been able to close the gap significantly, however it is not yet over due to absentee ballots still to be counted in the coming days.

Lemire added that, “according to some analysis… a lot of the outstanding ballots are from places that went pretty hard,” for Garcia, which could have the power to place her ahead of Adams.

“On a more serious note,” Lemire said, this electoral error is, “fueling doubts people have had, and people like Donald Trump, were eager to flame about people’s trust in the voting system.”

Additionally, Lemire said that the chaos that ensued as a result of the error was a “pretty tough twenty four hours for democracy.”

“With such questions about the validity of the whole process,” Lemire continued, “I wouldn’t be shocked if there’s some sort of recount that eventually is called for.”

“So this is a mess and it’s going to be a mess for a while.”

As for whether Garcia or Adams is a favorite at this point, Lemire said it’s a “toss-up.” Listen to that moment above, and download the full episode here.

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