By Robert Hornak
The very complex and highly technical process of collecting nominating petitions to get on the ballot for this year’s citywide elections just concluded. And there are a few interesting surprises that could make this one of the most competitive and wide-open mayoral elections in decades.
First, we have dozens of candidates filed to run for mayor. This is no doubt due to the incredible unpopularity of Eric Adams. Even after having the charges against him mercifully dropped, his political career still appears to be over. Adams recently dropped the bombshell that he won’t even run in the Democrat primary for reelection, but instead as an independent.
Recent polls have shown that among Democrat primary voters Adams is less popular than even President Trump. Corruption allegations aside, voters still think he’s done a very poor job as mayor and does not deserve another four years to do more of the same. Adams surely senses this is the end for him, even if he doesn’t want to admit it. Were he to run in the Democrat primary and lose badly, his status as a lame duck would be cemented for the rest of his term.
But by declaring his candidacy as an independent, he stays in the race until November, delaying the inevitable while being able to fool himself into thinking he might be able to turn things around by the time the general election rolls around.
Then there’s the Democrat primary in June, with Andrew Cuomo far and away the frontrunner. All the players in the Democratic Party are lining up with Cuomo, including all the unions that typically matter. They see him as the likely winner and want to be able to take some of the credit for his miraculous comeback around contract negotiation time.
In a massive field, socialist Assemblyman Zohran Mamdami is holding on to a distant second place. But in multiple ranked choice voting simulations, Mamdami falls to third place, showing that his support, while very passionate and full of youthful energy, doesn’t attract many second choice rankings and his ability to grow is likely very limited. Even most NYC Democrats don’t like his socialist and antisemitic positions.
The exception is the Working Families Party, which in recent years has not worked well with the Democratic Socialist candidates. But their passion is built on a hatred of Cuomo, who as governor changed the ballot access rules for party organizations to achieve a permanent line on the ballot in order to kill the WFP.
The WFP submitted petitions for a candidate named Gowri Krishna, but he is surely a place holder until after the June primary when they will make the ultimate decision on who to give their line to. They recently endorsed four of the Democrats running, including Mamdami, but are waiting to see how each ultimately performs and has the best chance to derail Cuomo.
Then there is the Republican primary, with nine candidates filing petitions to run. However, because of the hyper-technical nature of the process and the difficulty of getting valid Republican signatures, many if not most of these candidates will get knocked off the ballot.
Guardian Angels founder and WABC radio host Curtis Sliwa is the frontrunner for the Republican nomination, and with all five Republican County organizations collecting petitions for him, he’s sure to survive any potential petition challenge.
Then there is another independent candidate, powerhouse lawyer and former federal prosecutor James Walden. Walden is a centrist Democrat who skipped the messy party primary and is just running in the November general election.
The big question this year is can independent candidates break through all the noise the media makes around major party candidates while trying to overcome the barriers for independents in a very strong two-party system?
Instead of the typical “choose one from column A or one from column B” general election, we could have multiple well-financed candidates running in November from across the political spectrum.
And with the wide-open contest this campaign is looking to become, other independent candidates could be inspired to jump in. If Walden or any other independent candidate captures the voters’ attention this year, it could be a very fascinating election with a very unpredictable result.
Robert Hornak is a professional political consultant who has previously served as the Deputy Director of the Republican Assembly Leader’s NYC office and as Executive Director of the Queens Republican Party. He can be reached at rahornak@gmail.com and @RobertHornak on X.
