Some Thoughts on the NYC Democratic Primary
Thoughts on the election and on the electoral rules used.
As I am sure many of you noted, New York City held the Democratic Primary to nominate a candidate to run for mayor. In recent years, the primary winner has gone on to win the office. This year, the primary drew substantial attention because the disgraced governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, was running for the nomination, and his major rival ended up being an adherent to the Democratic Socialists of America, City Councilman Zohran Mamdani. Mamdani was also noteworthy for being a Muslim running to be mayor of a city with a substantial Jewish population (second in size in the world, only to Tel Aviv) in the context of the ongoing war in Gaza.
Add into the mix that the race was conducted using Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) and it being a prominent off-term election, and that means plenty of eyeballs.
Cuomo was expected to win, but here are the results of the first round via the NYT that caused him to concede. The final results will not be out until Tuesday, but the gap between Mamdani and Cuomo even before the assessment of the rank-ordered preferences of voters, and knowing that a strategic alliance between Mamdani and the third-place finisher, NYC Comptroller Brad Lander, means that Cuomo is mathematically toast, and he knows it.
So, first let me provide some basic thoughts on this race, and then let me move on to talk a bit about primaries, fusion voting, and RCV.
First, some short takes.
- I am just glad that Andrew Cuomo was repudiated by the voters. If the word “barrage” as linked to “sexual harassment allegations” is part of a story about you, perhaps you ought not be given another leadership role in government. (And shame on anyone who was willing to give him a sideways pass–I’m looking at you, NYT‘s editorial board).
- It is nice for the now front-runner to be in his 30s rather than his late 70s, as so many prominent politicians have been of late. Even Cuomo at 67 is a marginal improvement, but as I noted in another post recently, retirement isn’t such a bad thing. Note that yet again, Gen X gets skipped.
- People need to take a breath about the implications of the NYC mayoral races and their national implications. I am old enough to remember when people were carrying on about how Eric Adams and his pro-law-and-order stance were the future of the Democratic Party. Nate Silver, in particular, comes to mind.
- Can people stop and realize what tends to be the trend for NYC mayors and their popularity?
- I know it sounds like the mayorality of NYC would be a good launching point for national political aspirants, but might I suggest you Google “Rudy Giuliani” and “Michael Bloomberg”?
- Mamdani’s DSAness is going to be a challenge, but it also is neither a reason to freak out, nor to assume that this is the future of the Democratic Party (see, again, Eric Adams, Harbinger of Democratic Centrism). Mamdani, should he win the general election, will have a hard time delivering on his promises (and, indeed, it will be interesting to see how he tries to manage expectations in the campaign.
- Ezra Klein and Chris Hayes had an interesting conversation about how Mamdani conducted this campaign that I think is worth a listen. When I first saw the description, I thought it was going to be a “Is the DSA is the future of the Democrats?” kind of thing, but it wasn’t. I am skeptical about drawing too many conclusions from one campaign, but the discussion of social media v. traditional media was really interesting.
Some other thoughts about the structure of the race.
First, given New York state’s system of fusion voting (i.e., wherein a candidate can be nominated by multiple parties), it is quite possible for a candidate to lose the Democratic nomination and still be on the ballot in November. It was speculated, for example, that if Mamdani lost the Democratic nomination, he still would have been on the ballot as the candidate of the Working Families Party. Indeed, I suspect he may still be the WFP’s candidate as well as the Democratic Party’s (as was the case for Bill de Blasio in 2013 and 2017).
This also allows candidates to run as independents, even if they lost a bid for another party’s nomination. Hence, Cuomo will stay on NYC mayor’s ballot after conceding Democratic primary to Mamdani, sources tell CNN.
Andrew Cuomo will not drop out of the New York City mayoral race by the Friday deadline to remove himself from the general election ballot, sources tell CNN. That leaves in place contingency plans he had established before the Democratic primary to challenge Zohran Mamdani and incumbent Mayor Eric Adams in November.
[…]
Cuomo is calculating that the full city’s electorate would be significantly different from Democratic primary voters who were energized by Mamdani’s focus on affordability and his campaign’s online videos. His camp also believes Mamdani and his policy ideas, from a rent freeze to city-operated grocery stores, will receive increased scrutiny now that Mamdani is positioned to secure a Democratic primary win once ranked-choice votes are allocated next week.
It is not a terrible bet, but given that NYC is overwhelmingly Democratic, I would rather be in Mamdani’s shoes than Cuomo’s. Further, it is worth noting that Mayor Adams is running for re-election as an independent and that Curtis Sliwa of Guardian Angels fame is the Republican nominee. Unlike the Democratic primary, which uses RCV, the general election is won by plurality. As such, Mamdani does not need 50%+1 to win; he just needs to get the largest share of the vote. Having three significant anti-Mamdani choices to split his opposition works to his favor.
Speaking of the RCV of it all, let me turn to this piece from Annie Lowrey in The Atlantic from before the primary: New York Is Not a Democracy, with the subtitle, “Too few voters are choosing the next mayor.”
Let me first and foremost take issue with the article’s title. I will blame an editor and not Lowrey (I will get to her in a second), but this is a terrible title, especially at this moment in US history, wherein democracy is actually under assault. There are certainly legitimate areas of critique of elections in NYC, but none of them would lead anyone who understands the term to assert that it isn’t a democracy.
Really, the title and the tone of the article seem more born out of typical American prejudice against any voting system that slightly deviates from “normal” than it does anything else.
I will agree with the subtitle, at least in part, the story of NYC of late has been one of the primaries choosing the eventual winner because there is no serious two-party competition in NYC. This is a problem across the country, and I agree that primaries are a key component in the non-competitiveness of American politics. I wrote about this not that long ago for Protect Democracy (see here). I will note that I am really talking there about primaries for legislative elections and how they shape party systems.
The fact that the NYC Mayor has, since 2013, been determined by the Democratic primary does show a general lack of party competitiveness. It is also true that NYC partisan politics, like those across the country, have been increasingly driven by the nationalized nature of US party politics. In other words, since voters have very strong partisan voting behavior in federal elections, that has a clear tendency to then affect electoral behavior at the state and local levels.
Put another way: there is no particular reason why we in the US could not have party systems that operate at the state and local levels while different parties function at the national level. And, indeed, you do see, as noted above, some state-level parties in NY. But, they tend to do poorly relative to the Rs and the Ds.
This nationalization of party politics is long-standing and has deepened in recent decades as the parties have fully sorted ideologically and geographically, especially since the 1994 mid-terms. I have written about this phenomenon before (for example, here, here, here, and here). Polarization and the way it tribalizes politics just makes it all worse.
Regardless, the reality is that the citizens of NYC will actually have at least three real options for mayor (Mamdani, Cuomo, and Adams), which is more than a lot of voters get. As such, concerns about NYC’s democracy and whether voters matter seem misplaced, in my view.
But let me get to Lowrey and RCV.
They [Cuomo and Mamdani] are leading a field of a dozen mayoral candidates who will face off in a ranked-choice election for the Democratic primary on June 24. (Because the city has six times as many registered Democrats as registered Republicans, the Democratic primary is generally the de facto mayoral election.) Instead of picking one person to lead the city, voters will rank up to five candidates. This process is wonkish and confusing. But it ensures that similar candidates do not split a constituency. This, proponents of ranked-choice voting say, is the most democratic form of democracy.
Cuomo is likely to get more first-choice votes than any other candidate. But he’s not projected to win an outright majority, meaning that the ranked-choice system would kick in. Candidate after candidate would get knocked out, and their supporters’ votes reapportioned. In the end, the political scion with a multimillion-dollar war chest and blanket name recognition could lose to the young Millennial whom few New Yorkers had heard of as of last year. One new survey, by Data for Progress, shows Cuomo ultimately defeating Mamdani by two points, within the margin of error. Another poll shows Mamdani with more support than Cuomo.
Seeing a no-name upstart attempt to upset a brand-name heavyweight is thrilling. But the system has warped the political calculus of the mayoral campaign. Candidates who might have dropped out are staying in. Candidates who might be attacking one another on their platforms or records are instead considering cross-endorsing. Voters used to choosing one contender are plotting out how to rank their choices. Moreover, they are doing so in a closed primary held in the June of an odd year, meaning most city residents will not show up at the polls anyway. If this is democracy, it’s a funny form of it.
This is just an odd critique.
To make a list of responses from the paragraph.
- Voters have more choices if more candidates are on the ballot (that is a good thing).
- Coalition building, because the system rewards cooperation (that is a good thing).
- That voters need to be strategic and having the think through their options is also a good thing
- The fact that the primary likely picks the winner is a problem with primaries, especially in off-cycle years. I agree with this, but they have nothing to do with RCV.
I am not a big proponent of RCV for legislative elections, because using it in single-seat districts ignores that the usage of single-seat districts is the major flaw in our system. I also am not convinced it produces more moderate outcomes, as proponents often claim. I am, however, fully in favor of RCV for single-office elections like we see here (for both primaries and the general election). It allows for the maximal number of votes to count, and I think that the encouragement of strategic alliances helps provide more information to voters who can then make even more well-informed decisions. Indeed, this is especially true in a primary wherein there are no party labels to help provide even basic signals to voters.
Without ranked-choice voting, Cuomo would probably steamroll his competition. With ranked-choice voting, Mamdani could defeat him. In Data for Progress’s recent poll, 37 percent of voters ranked Cuomo first, and 31 percent ranked Mamdani first. But as the weakest candidates were knocked out and their votes redistributed, Mamdani closed the gap. Other simulations show Cuomo with a greater margin of victory, but the general pattern is the same.
Setting aside any questions of what the best outcome would be in terms of the candidates, this is a weird position for Lowrey to take. If she really is concerned, as the subtitle of the piece notes (again, probably written by an editor), that too few voters are choosing the mayor, then having the primary be decided by plurality would exacerbate that problem.
Again, this suggests a prejudice against even modest deviations from “normal” voting.
It also seems worth noting that Mamdani won a clear plurality in the first round, which undercuts the notion that only RCV voodoo gave him a chance (granted, RCV did influence how he campaigned).
Ranked-choice voting might better reflect voter preferences, but it is chaotic, requiring extra strategizing by both candidates and voters. To keep Cuomo out of Gracie Mansion, some candidates have said that they are contemplating cross-endorsing Mamdani, telling their supporters to rank them first and him second. Unions and political groups are endorsing multiple candidates; many are pushing a simple “Don’t rank Cuomo” message. (Ramos, an exception, has thrown her support behind Cuomo while remaining in the race, saying he has “experience, toughness, and the knowledge to lead New York.”)
This is just a weird critique to me. If RCV better reflects voter preferences, then that strikes me as an unvarnished good. I also think that “chaotic” is simply the wrong word. It is definitely more complex than simple plurality voting, but it is not chaotic. Again, having candidates behave strategically and provide more information to voters is a good thing, not a chaotic one.
I am not unsympathetic to the following, at least to a point.
The system demands more from voters. Instead of choosing a single candidate, voters have to figure out what they think about every candidate, then produce an ordinal ranking on the basis of their own feelings and calculations about who seems likeliest to win. It’s a lot of work, and not work that normal people seem to relish. Ranked-choice voting might also diminish somevoters’ influence. In 2021, Black, Latino, and Asian voters were less likely than non-Latino white voters to rank a full slate of candidates, in effect curtailing their electoral power.
I think that there is something to the idea that the more a system demands of voters, the more some voters get left behind. Time, in and of itself, is a resource that is not evenly distributed across the population, a point well made by political scientist Kevin J. Elliott in Democracy for Busy People (a book I would recommend). Having said that, I don’t think it is all that hard for people to learn which candidates they prefer, especially when RCV incentivizes candidates to make themselves known since they have a greater chance of winning than they would in a plurality-based contest as well as having the potential to have an effect on the racem even if they may lose in ways, again, that would not obtain if it was a straightforward plurality-based contest.
Lowrey and I agree on this, however, although the issue of the outsized role of the primaries should be the main focus of her article, not RCV.
The fact that many elections are decided in primaries is its own problem, and a big one. In 2021, just one in 10 New York City residents voted in the June election. Eric Adams became mayor having been ranked first by only 289,403 people in a city of more than 8 million.
Although she missed the mark as it pertained to this election. And she fails to see how RCV changes the importance of the big name, at least in this case.
The prominence of the primary helps big-name candidates and incumbents. Holding elections in off years skews races to the right, because conservative voters are more likely to show up at odd times.
Of course, the fact that the big name was tainted was part of the issue. And clearly, the electorate for the primary was not more conservative.
She concludes as follows, and she at least got this prediction (or, really, quasi-prediction) right.
Whether Cuomo or Mamdani wins this month, New Yorkers might have another chance to decide between them. After this annoyingly chaotic primary, we could have an annoyingly chaotic election: If Mamdani loses, he might run in the general on the Working Families Party ticket. If Cuomo loses, he might run in the general as an independent, as will the disgraced incumbent, Eric Adams. At least, in that election, voters won’t be asked to rank their favorite, just to pick one.
But, man, she does like calling things “chaotic.” I will grant that I was not in NYC and maybe she was, but I have been watching elections near and far for a long time, and this one did not appear especially chaotic from my vantage point. It certainly was more dynamic with more moving parts, including actual competition between Mamdani and Cuomo. That’s a good thing!
I will end by noting that her happiness with only one choice in the general is misplaced. Why a system that would, in her own words as quoted above, “better reflect voter preferences,” be seen as inferior to a plurality winner is beyond me. Sure, it is simpler, but simpler is not always better.
I am assuming the NYT should be NYC. Or is my assumption wrong?
Besides overuse and incorrect word of chaotic, Lowrey’s use of annoyingly is quite telling. I think she’s annoyed because everything is not cut and dried and she has to work a little harder to get an analysis out.
And OBTW, RCV making the voters to think a little harder is not a bad thing.
Wikipedia gives the number of Jews in the NYC Metro Area as 1.3M, and the number of Muslims as 1M. (And in the city itself, roughly 1M and 750k) These are very comparable numbers, not quite the same, but not that far apart either.
It’s just a fact to keep in mind when seeing the number of articles about the Jewish population, and nearly everyone in the Democratic Primary proudly saying that they are going to visit Israel as Mayor.
I’m only half tongue in cheek when I say that the media hasn’t updated their narrative on NYC since Jesse Jackson infamously referred to it by the slur “Hymie Town.”
They really should figure out a way to add a third voting system in there. Maybe have the Republican Primary chosen by picking one ballot at random.
(I’m a little surprised no one serious is running on the Republican ballot. It’s not like NYC hasn’t had Republican mayors in recent memory)
Alternately, it splits the anti-Adams vote, because that man is hated. I don’t think we will ever know who this would help, just lots of guesses.
It’s disconcerting when a losing candidate in a primary (and Cuomo’s shortfall was not insignificant), chooses to continue as an independent. It’s as if their own self interest overrides what clearly a majority thinks of them. Cuomo either is so addicted to power or craves “redemption” that he is not willing to accept popular condemnation. A terrible thing to foist upon a community that one purportedly cares about.
As with most relationships it can be the most caring thing to know when to let go. Otherwise, attempts to hang on can be tantamount to stalking. And that’s just plain creepy. Cuomo’s “creep factor” is already up there as it is. The same can be said about Adam’s.
Steven: “Really, the title and the tone of the article seem more born out of typical American prejudice against any voting system that slightly deviates from “normal” than it does anything else.”
Or simply that that ‘wrong’ person won.
IMO, the whining about ranked-choice voting is actually a way to preemptively question the legitimacy of Mamdani’s win.
(Something which is going to be even more important if he also wins the general.)
Also, less unseemly than outright saying that a brown, left-wing Muslim can’t ever be a legitimate mayor.
Any system can be gamed.
When I started my current job, most (like 99.9%) proposals were adjudicated in a binary system. that is, participants qualified only if they met all the requirements. The winner was the qualifying participant that offered the lowest price.
Around 2009-10 this changed to a points system. This awards points in several ways for how the requirements are met (for instance, having more delivery vehicles gets you more points). the winner now is the one with the most points.
The thing is we had a way of competing under the binary system, which would not hold up under the points system. So we had to change how we did things. For example, by leasing delivery vehicles to augment our fleet and get more points in that area (among lots of other changes).
RCV is too new and not used widely enough. People haven’t figured out how to 1) effectively campaign on it, 2) estimate the likely results, 3) even how to vote (things such as how many candidates need to be ranked, if any; and this varies by city or state).
Eventually RCV may gain wider adoption and get normalized, or it will fade away.
@Rob1: IMHO, there’s a lot of things at work with Cuomo. Yes, arrogance. Yes, self interest. But also a sense of having been “wronged,” and he’s also probably got a Greek chorus’s worth of enablers surrounding him telling he should run. Add to that all of the moneyed interests who are terrified of Mamdani, and Cuomo probably thinks he can win.
On the overall race itself…I feel like I’m the only one who doesn’t really…care much. Yes, New York is a big big city, and yes, a mayor there is different than a mayor of a small city. But this is a very local race in a very liberal city. It’s not going to have an outsized impact on national politics.
@Scott:
Thanks for the catch. I type “NYT” so often!
And excellent point about “annoyingly.”
@Gustopher:
I think the reason is that, of late, winning the primary equaled winning the office. So, the cost in time, votes, and resources is lower in winning the Democratic primary than winning the R and then have to run in the general. Not to mention that the R label has been tainted in mainly D place by its association with Trump.
@Barry:
She wrote the piece before knowing who the winner would be.
Apparently, Lowery was far more supportive of RCV in 2022.
And just to comment on Mamdani’s social media strategy. Hayes and Klein mention Trump and the Hawk Tuah girl, and go on about ‘the mimetic tip of the spear’ and how some politicians communicate via policy and others communicate policy. Really: this is what management pays consultants to do so they can say they are ‘addressing the issue’.
Yeah, Mamdani was everywhere on social media and young social-media conscious voters loved him, but he wasn’t doing memes or acting like a lefty Trump or trying to connect by using clips of his attempts at hip-hop. He was everywhere in real life and social media captured that. His main assets were being earnest, being focused, having convictions, and having the conviction that his audience had convictions and focus. Or at least his videos communicated this.
Lowrie’s critique of RCV is weird.
I agree that having the winner of a party primary being the de facto general election winner is problematic, but it’s hardly unusual. Indeed, it’s likely the norm.
I agree that off-off year elections are likely to result in low turnout. But that has nothing to do with RCV.
I agree that allowing the loser of a primary to have a second bite at the apple as an independent is just bizarre. But it has nothing to do with RCV and, indeed, is arguably more democratic than the alternative.
@Steven L. Taylor:
It was clear that Mamdani had at least a decent shot. Pundits were already clutching their pearls.
Moreover, Lowrey certainly writes as if this would be a bad thing:
@Modulo Myself: Interesting pick-up on Lowrey.
And like I said about Hayes and Klein, I wouldn’t extrapolate too much from one campaign. The conversation does raise some interesting contrasts between Mamdani and Cuomo’s approaches.
@drj: That’s fair. She clearly did not like the choices.
My gripe with her is that she fully misses the point about where the problem lies: primaries and weak parties, not with RCV (at least if democracy is really her concern).
@Steven L. Taylor:
But it is quite plain that her criticism of RCV makes very little sense. See, e.g., James’ comment above.
Which is why I think it is fairly obvious that Mamdani is her problem, not RCV (as Modulo also points out).
If Lowrey misses the point, she does so quite deliberately, IMO.
The irony is that there’s a much stronger case for considering Adams’ win four years ago a fluke caused by the weirdness of RCV. Mamdani won decisively in the first round, something that cannot be said about Adams last time.
Meanwhile, the National Review has managed to utterly beclown themselves by actually publishing things like…this. That’s what they’ve managed to dredge up as a hit piece on Mamdani.
No word yet on whether they will revisit their support for Kavanaugh despite his college “antics.”
Both Cuomo and Adams are leaning into the Trump playbook: You deal with shame by being shameless.
@Jen:
But Mamdani exhibited a “casual attitude towards private property,” which is, of course, far, far worse than Kavanaugh’s casual attitude towards consent.
Gotta have priorities.
Good post and pretty much agree with @James Joyner’s comments.
And I appreciated noting that Gen-X gets passed over again. It’s really strange the position this (our) age cohort is in politically.
RCV isn’t a panacea, but it’s an improvement over what it replaced – at least so far.
It’s still problematic that the general election (like most American elections) determines the winner by plurality. Whoever wins, if it’s significantly less than 50%, they will be weak politically from day one.
I also recommend the Klein-Hayes podcast. It gets to something I’ve been trying to wrap my head around for a while, about how traditional media’s influence – especially TV – is waning compared to alternatives. And a lot of this is generational. The game is changing, and Cuomo’s campaign looks like a dinosaur.
I think this is also a good example of how personality plays a significant role. In terms of policy, Mamdani may be a typical campus leftist, but he’s got a lot of qualities that are traditionally good for politicians plus those that are valuable in the modern media environment, as described in the podcast. A lot of this boils down to a weasel-word – “authenticity” but he’s also attractive, energetic, and able to engage with people in a positive way. AOC has similar talents which is why she’s been so much more successful than the other members of the “Squad.”
Contrast that to Cuomo’s baggage and his well-known acerbic personality with zero authenticity.
One thing I really appreciate about our federal system is that states and localities can try new things. We are, for example, seeing the experiments with RCV around the country and how they work in practice. That’s a good thing!
And although I don’t have a dog in the fight for NYC mayor, I think a Mamdani win would be the most interesting to see. Many of his policies are dumb (rent control), but some others will be interesting experiments, assuming he can implement them (easier said than done). I’m skeptical of the ideas and their ability to be operationalized, but often things are not as obvious as they seem, so it’s good to run the experiment to see how it works in reality.
I can’t tell who Lowery is supposed to be upset at, or why. A lot of the behavior she talks about is normal in parliamentary systems, for example, though usually be the candidates, not the voters. It’s how the far right has been kept out of power in Europe in several places, though again, by candidates dropping out and telling their voters who to vote for instead, not RCV, but the general idea is the same, that there are people with a range of views on a range of topics, and you can decide which topics are most important, and who represents those best, and next best, and so on. It’s better than one person having to embody the perfect candidate, and then some people’s preferences switching to match that of the candidate, as is happening in the case of Trump, where all sorts of things that are supposedly anathema to Republicans that they claimed Obama or Biden would do/was doing Trump is actually doing, and that’s met with a shrug.
And if anyone is at fault for a lack of selection in the general election, which is maybe what she was upset about, that’s the fault of Republicans/parties again. That the Republican party can’t produce a credibly candidate in well over half the country measured by population, is a problem. I hear complaints of a lack of viewpoint diversity allowed among Democrats, and again, it’s far worse among Republicans.
And fuck Cuomo. I’m not sure who I’d choose if forced to choose between him and Adams, but probably Adams. At least Adams is entertaining.
@Barry: Thinking along a parallel line:
Or maybe it’s that she has to work harder to get to the analysis that she wants to make, unfortunately.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Bloomberg ran as a Republican — not a very conservative Republican, on the national level, but Republican, and served three terms. There have only been three terms since then (admittedly, featuring the rise of Trump)
A MAGA Republican would have no chance, but a moderate Republican who wants to reach across the aisle and either seek common sense solutions or run NYC like a business could be competitive with the less liberal general election voters.
Especially if the Democrats were to nominate a former governor who resigned in disgrace (as was widely expected as the field was coming together), or a Muslim Democratic Socialist (which was a bit of a surprise). Or some other variety of potentially flawed or out of step candidate.
Instead, the Republicans nominated a crank. A crank with no government experience. A crank who was completely unopposed, so the Republicans didn’t even have a primary. A crank who owns 16(!) cats.
There should have been a deputy borough president from Staten Island or something willing to step up and take a chance — someone plausible.
@Andy:
While I am a supporter of RCV, it’s been frustrating to see how many people seem to misunderstand how it works–sometimes willfully. After Mary Peltola’s election I kept hearing the claim that she only won because of vote-splitting between Sarah Palin and Nick Begich. It was based on the fallacious assumption that the first-place choices are the only ones that should count, failing to understand that giving voters the option of second-place choices impacts who they decide to put in first place; instead these critics acted like the first-place results would have been exactly the same under the traditional system. Peltola’s win happened because a significant number of voters chose Begich in first place and Peltola in second, proving they weren’t voting purely based on the candidates’ party.
Obviously Republicans were making these arguments in bad faith, but they wouldn’t do it if it didn’t have a capacity to persuade. That leads me to wonder how much RCV really improves a sense of legitimacy for the winners, if voters view the majoritarian results in the later rounds as artificial.
@drj:
This would be interesting given that RCV is, at its roots, a way to preemptively question the legitimacy of how elections work to begin with. Is all of the posturing on these questions only a reflection of how the system failed because “my guy” didn’t get elected?
@Kylopod:
Is the general election for mayor run under RCV too? If so, I withdrawal that part of my comment. I thought only the primary was RCV.
@Andy: No, just the primary.
@Andy:
It’s amusing to see “authenticity” described as a weasel word, when it’s literally “does not appear to obviously be a weasel”.
So much of the NYC rental market is either subject to rent control or rent stabilization that it’s more a question of how to implement vs. whether to have it. I don’t know Mamdani’s positions on it, but every candidate for mayor is going to have some variation on it. So, not dumb, per se, unless he wants to do something dramatic.
A rent freeze on the rent stabilized units can make sense, depending on duration, efforts to build more housing, etc. The devil is in the details.
Moving is a huge expense, and it makes sense to try to limit how often this has to happen for middle-class and lower tenants. This can be as much of a problem as the rent itself.
For Seattle, which doesn’t have a lot of tenant protections, my preference would be to capping rent increases when renewing leases for a 2nd and 3rd year, and then let rent go to market rate, to balance stability for tenants with the problems (and perverse incentives) a harder rent control has on landlords. But, I’m a filthy neoliberal rather than a true leftist*.
NYC has a different environment with rent control, so likely needs different solutions.
Absolutely agree. Mamdani may be one of those rare, actually-talented, genuinely-inspiring politicians. He may be better at that than AOC. But I’m a terrible judge of that — I have no idea why anyone would think Obama is a great speaker.
*: I kid, sort of. There are definitely industries where the incentives of capitalism don’t work for the benefit of society (health insurance) and which should just be government run or severely regulated in a way that makes the incentives align with the public good.
@Gustopher:
Well, you know the adage: the secret to acting is sincerity, and if you can fake it, you’ve got it made.
@Gustopher:
You’re right, the details matter a great deal regarding impacts. However, there is a broad consensus among economists—across ideological lines—that rent control tends to do more harm than good in the long term, with considerable evidence supporting this conclusion. It’s great for those who have incumbency in a rent controlled apartment, but it generally sucks for everyone else. Freezing rents only exacerbates all the problems.
With regard to it being more complicated for voters to have to think(!) and rank multiple people instead of making just one choice, couldn’t anyone who didn’t want to make the effort just rank a single person and call it good?
@Gustopher:
I watched a version of this happen IRT in Portland* in the wake of the Covid rent controls. When the freeze was released, “the market” discovered that some apartments in some buildings were suddenly worth 25-40% more than they’d been worth pre-Covid. Some rents even doubled. Color me skeptical.
Still, enacting regulations that will permit me to live at each address for up to 3 years is progress of a sort. I’m old enough that I can probably keep juggling addresses on that kind of schedule. (And deposits and moving expenses aren’t an issue for me. I have resources enough to spend 5k** on moving every 3 years, for a while at leasst.
*From the comfort on my Kelso, WA, (the fourth most economically depressed urban zone in Washington State) apartment (where post Covid rents increased nearly 20% year on year for 3 before I decided to move).
** The total additional out of pocket expenditure for the move from Kelso to Portland (where thanks to a post-Covid rent control statute, I moved in for less than my Kelso rent had been).
@Andy:
This is largely where I am as well.
@Gustopher: I think it is noteworthy that he ran as an independent in his third term.
And the MAGA factor is very important for contemporary choices.
I think in a different era, Adams would have gone R.
@Kylopod:
People are quite stubborn about changes to what they think are the “normal” and “proper” ways things have always worked!!
It’s always fun to watch “vote blue no matter who” magically not be the rallying cry when the who is anyone other than a centrist / blue dog / DLC “we want a strong Republican party even though we’re running as a Democrat” candidate. Why, it’s almost like they predetermined they’re the only electable ones!
Here’s hoping Mamdani doesn’t just win but makes it unquestionable.