By: Jack Madden

The New York Mayoral Race of 2021 is heating up with more than two dozen candidates running. However, only five or so have a real shot at replacing Mayor de Blasio. These five candidates are Andrew Yang, Maya Wiley(former de Blasio official), Scott Stringer (city treasurer), Eric Adams ( Brooklyn borough president),Raymond McGuire (Citigroup bank executive), Kathryn Garcia (city sanitation chief). Andrew Yang looks like the person to beat as he is regularly demolishing his opponents in polling. Due to the unique nature of NYC’s election laws, a person needs a majority to win in a process called Ranked Choice Voting. Ranked Choice Voting is where voters rank the candidates from 1 to 5, and if no candidate gets a majority, the person with the least votes gets eliminated. Those ballots get transferred to the next in line candidates until someone gets the majority.

        The major candidates running are all vying for specific ethnic and interest groups in one of America’s most diverse cities. These major groups include the Latino, Asian, Black, LGBTQ+, Jewish, and the progressive, democratic socialist voters. It is unseen yet which candidates have the backing of which group, but you can tell by endorsement of these group’s leaders. Scott Stringer seems to be running as the progressive populist, with endorsements from two socialist state politicians, and from Jamaal Bowman, the newly elected socialist politician of southern Westchester and the Bronx.On the other hand, Raymond McGuire  seems to be running in the mold of Michael Bloomberg, a centrist and moderate, who will run the city in a timely fashion. However, many progressive groups that are beginning to establish themselves in the city such as Democratic Socialists of America or Indivisible, do not want any moderate candidate to win such as Raymond McGuire or Kathryn Garcia, for fear of budget cuts and a pro-police platform.

The major issues that are facing these candidates are the Covid-economic crisis, the skyrocketing inequality, budget cuts, Black Lives Matter and defund the police movement . Maya Wiley hopes to balance these issues out by running as a sensible, economic liberal but with very progressive views on social issues, such as reforming and defunding the police. The front-runner Andrew Yang is running as an out-of-the-box thinker who wants to institute a universal basic income and run a little more to the left of the crowd but not by much. Yang looks to be the next mayor, as he has yet to lose a single poll to any of the other candidates, simply due to his name recognition from his presidential run. In the end, time will tell who will win in the end and become the next mayor of the largest city in America.