Latest news with #NewYorkCity
Washington Post
an hour ago
- Politics
- Washington Post
AP Decision Notes: What to expect in New York's primaries
WASHINGTON — Voters across New York state on Tuesday will pick nominees in municipal primaries that include high-profile comeback bids in New York City by a former governor and a former congressman who both left office mired in scandal. At the top of the ballot, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo leads a crowded 11-candidate Democratic primary field for New York City mayor nearly four years after resigning from office following allegations he sexually harassed 11 women . State Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani has also emerged as a major contender for the nomination , winning key endorsements from U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York. Also vying for the nomination are City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams and Comptroller Brad Lander . The winner of the Democratic mayoral primary typically is the heavy favorite for the general election in overwhelmingly Democratic-leaning New York City. This year's party nominee will face incumbent Mayor Eric Adams, who was elected as a Democrat but skipped Tuesday's primary to run as an independent in November. Adams was indicted in a 2024 corruption case that President Donald Trump's Justice Department later dropped . Curtis Sliwa , founder of the anti-crime patrol group the Guardian Angels, will once again be the Republican Party nominee. In the Democratic primary for New York City Council District 2, former U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner is seeking to return to elected office more than a decade after multiple sexting scandals ended his congressional career, doomed his 2013 mayoral bid and resulted in a 21-month federal prison sentence . Weiner faces four other candidates, including state Assemblyman Harvey Epstein. A total of 30 City Council districts will hold contested primaries Tuesday. Also facing a primary is Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg , who won a criminal conviction against Donald Trump in 2024. He faces a challenge from attorney Patrick Timmins. The New York City contests use a ranked-choice voting system in which voters may rank up to five candidates in order of preference. If no candidate receives a majority of first-choice votes, the lowest vote-getter is dropped, with that candidate's votes reallocated to voters' next-highest choices. Ranked-choice voting is used only to determine winners in contests with more than two candidates in which no one receives a majority. The process is not used in any other jurisdiction in the state. Across the state, voters will decide primaries for local offices, including a competitive contest for Buffalo mayor. In the Democratic primary, acting Mayor Christopher Scanlon seeks a full term after replacing Buffalo's longest-serving mayor, Byron Brown, who resigned in October to head an off-track betting agency. He faces a tough challenge from state Sen. Sean Ryan, who has the endorsement of the county Democratic Party. Also running are City Council member Rasheed Wyatt, former fire Commissioner Garnell Whitfield Jr. and community organizer Anthony Tyson-Thompson. The Associated Press does not make projections and will declare a winner only when it's determined there is no scenario that would allow the trailing candidates to close the gap. If a race has not been called, the AP will continue to cover any newsworthy developments, such as candidate concessions or declarations of victory. In doing so, the AP will make clear that it has not yet declared a winner and explain why. Under New York state election law, an automatic recount is triggered in races with more than 1 million votes if the margin of victory is fewer than 5,000 votes. For smaller races, the automatic recount is triggered if the margin of victory is either 0.5% or less, or up to 20 votes. In a ranked-choice election, if the margin between the final two candidates meets the recount threshold, then all the ballots in the election are recounted round by round. The AP may declare a winner in a race that is eligible for a recount if it can determine the lead is too large for a recount or legal challenge to change the outcome. Here's a look at what to expect Tuesday: New York will hold municipal primaries across the state on Tuesday. Polls close at 9 p.m. ET. The AP will provide vote results and declare winners in primaries for many of the top elected positions in New York City, including mayor, Manhattan district attorney, comptroller, public advocate and borough president of the Bronx, Brooklyn and Manhattan. Also covered are contested New York City Council primaries, mostly Democratic, in 30 districts and the Democratic primary for Buffalo mayor. New York has a closed primary system. Registered party members may vote only in their own party's primary. In New York City, initial vote results released on primary night will include preliminary tallies only of first-choice votes. These results are not final or official. As these results are reported, the AP will call winners in races in which it's clear a candidate will receive more than 50% of the vote, either in the initial count or once ranked-choice results are counted. City election officials are expected to release preliminary results a week after the primary. This involves running the ranked-choice voting process on just the ballots that have been tabulated by that time. These results will not be final or official and may continue to change as all remaining ballots are processed and tabulated. This means that it's possible, at least in theory, that the leading candidate when preliminary ranked-choice voting results are released may go on to lose the election once all the ballots have been counted and the final ranked-choice voting results are determined. The AP will call a winner based on ranked-choice voting results if it's clear another candidate cannot catch up when additional votes are counted. As of Feb. 20, there were 5.1 million registered voters in New York City. Of those, 65% were Democrats and 11% were Republicans. About 1.1 million voters were not registered with any party. Slightly more than 1 million voters cast ballots in the 2021 New York City primaries, about 27% of eligible voters, according to the city's Campaign Finance Board. About 12% of ballots in that primary were cast before election day. In the 2024 presidential election, the AP first reported New York City results at 9:01 p.m. ET, about a minute after polls closed. New York City's election night tabulation ended for the night in Queens at 12:25 a.m. ET with about 90% of total ballots counted across the city. As of Tuesday, there will be 133 days until the November general election. ___ Follow the AP's coverage of the 2025 election at .
Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Gerard Butler looks in good spirits as he enjoys a bike ride with girlfriend Morgan Brown in NYC
Gerard Butler looked in good spirits as he went for a bike ride with his girlfriend Morgan Brown in New York City on Thursday. The 300 actor, 55, cut a casual figure in a light brown t-shirt, adidas trainers and a baseball cap, as he cruised around in the sunshine. Morgan, 54, also opted for neutral tones, twinning her beige short-sleeved shirt with a matching mini-skirt and tasseled cowboy boots. The Los Angeles-based real-estate investor nodded to her home county with a Le Café De La Plage cap, merch from the iconic Malibu brunch hotspot. The couple confirmed they were officially back together hitting the How To Train Your Dragon red carpet as a duo in LA. Gerard Butler looked in good spirits as he went for a bike ride with his girlfriend Morgan Brown in New York City on Thursday The lovebirds were on and off for a few years, having first got together more than a decade ago in 2014. Gerard was recently spotted posing with actress Nico Parker while attending day three of CinemaCon 2025 in Las Vegas on Wednesday. Nico, who is the daughter of Emmy winner Thandiwe Newton and director Ol Parker - paused for snaps alongside The Phantom Of The Opera actor, 55, at a special screening of How To Train Your Dragon at the event. The upcoming film is a live-action adaptation of the 2010 animated movie and is set to hit theaters later this year on June 13. Nico put on a stylish display wearing a white dress which was layered with a dazzling silver jacket. She slipped into a pair of closed-toed, black heels and allowed her brunette locks to flow down in light waves past her shoulders. Nico and Gerard were also joined by director Dean DeBlois as they addressed the crowd inside a theater at Caesar's Palace. Other stars that have been cast in the remake include Mason Thames, Nick Frost, Julian Dennison and Gabriel Howell. The premise is: 'As an ancient threat endangers both Vikings and dragons alike on the isle of Berk, the friendship between Hiccup, an inventive Viking, and Toothless, a Night Fury dragon, becomes the key to both species forging a new future together,' per IMDB. In January, Gerard revealed the reason why shooting the upcoming action thriller, Den Of Thieves 2: Pantera, was a 'nightmare.' He opened up about an injury he suffered shortly before filming began for the sequel. The movie - which also stars O'Shea Jackson Jr. and Evin Ahmad - hit theatres on Friday, January 10. While recently talking to Entertainment Weekly, 'This was a weird time for me at the beginning of this movie because I'd been through a pretty intense surgery.' 'And then I tore my ACL fully about a month later and then started this movie,' Butler continued. 'So I was not in the best shape, and it was a pretty physical movie, and I didn't have a chance to get the surgery on my ACL, so I made this movie with a freshly torn ACL, and it was pretty rough. 'I wanted to put a "but" in to make it sound positive, but it wasn't positive. It was a nightmare!' Gerard expressed, before humorously adding, 'And I was a whiny little b***h!'
Associated Press
an hour ago
- Politics
- Associated Press
AP Decision Notes: What to expect in New York's primaries
WASHINGTON (AP) — Voters across New York state on Tuesday will pick nominees in municipal primaries that include high-profile comeback bids in New York City by a former governor and a former congressman who both left office mired in scandal. At the top of the ballot, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo leads a crowded 11-candidate Democratic primary field for New York City mayor nearly four years after resigning from office following allegations he sexually harassed 11 women. State Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani has also emerged as a major contender for the nomination, winning key endorsements from U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York. Also vying for the nomination are City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams and Comptroller Brad Lander. The winner of the Democratic mayoral primary typically is the heavy favorite for the general election in overwhelmingly Democratic-leaning New York City. This year's party nominee will face incumbent Mayor Eric Adams, who was elected as a Democrat but skipped Tuesday's primary to run as an independent in November. Adams was indicted in a 2024 corruption case that President Donald Trump's Justice Department later dropped. Curtis Sliwa, founder of the anti-crime patrol group the Guardian Angels, will once again be the Republican Party nominee. In the Democratic primary for New York City Council District 2, former U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner is seeking to return to elected office more than a decade after multiple sexting scandals ended his congressional career, doomed his 2013 mayoral bid and resulted in a 21-month federal prison sentence. Weiner faces four other candidates, including state Assemblyman Harvey Epstein. A total of 30 City Council districts will hold contested primaries Tuesday. Also facing a primary is Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who won a criminal conviction against Donald Trump in 2024. He faces a challenge from attorney Patrick Timmins. The New York City contests use a ranked-choice voting system in which voters may rank up to five candidates in order of preference. If no candidate receives a majority of first-choice votes, the lowest vote-getter is dropped, with that candidate's votes reallocated to voters' next-highest choices. Ranked-choice voting is used only to determine winners in contests with more than two candidates in which no one receives a majority. The process is not used in any other jurisdiction in the state. Across the state, voters will decide primaries for local offices, including a competitive contest for Buffalo mayor. In the Democratic primary, acting Mayor Christopher Scanlon seeks a full term after replacing Buffalo's longest-serving mayor, Byron Brown, who resigned in October to head an off-track betting agency. He faces a tough challenge from state Sen. Sean Ryan, who has the endorsement of the county Democratic Party. Also running are City Council member Rasheed Wyatt, former fire Commissioner Garnell Whitfield Jr. and community organizer Anthony Tyson-Thompson. The Associated Press does not make projections and will declare a winner only when it's determined there is no scenario that would allow the trailing candidates to close the gap. If a race has not been called, the AP will continue to cover any newsworthy developments, such as candidate concessions or declarations of victory. In doing so, the AP will make clear that it has not yet declared a winner and explain why. Under New York state election law, an automatic recount is triggered in races with more than 1 million votes if the margin of victory is fewer than 5,000 votes. For smaller races, the automatic recount is triggered if the margin of victory is either 0.5% or less, or up to 20 votes. In a ranked-choice election, if the margin between the final two candidates meets the recount threshold, then all the ballots in the election are recounted round by round. The AP may declare a winner in a race that is eligible for a recount if it can determine the lead is too large for a recount or legal challenge to change the outcome. Here's a look at what to expect Tuesday: Primary day New York will hold municipal primaries across the state on Tuesday. Polls close at 9 p.m. ET. What's on the ballot? The AP will provide vote results and declare winners in primaries for many of the top elected positions in New York City, including mayor, Manhattan district attorney, comptroller, public advocate and borough president of the Bronx, Brooklyn and Manhattan. Also covered are contested New York City Council primaries, mostly Democratic, in 30 districts and the Democratic primary for Buffalo mayor. Who gets to vote? New York has a closed primary system. Registered party members may vote only in their own party's primary. How are ranked-choice voting results reported? In New York City, initial vote results released on primary night will include preliminary tallies only of first-choice votes. These results are not final or official. As these results are reported, the AP will call winners in races in which it's clear a candidate will receive more than 50% of the vote, either in the initial count or once ranked-choice results are counted. City election officials are expected to release preliminary results a week after the primary. This involves running the ranked-choice voting process on just the ballots that have been tabulated by that time. These results will not be final or official and may continue to change as all remaining ballots are processed and tabulated. This means that it's possible, at least in theory, that the leading candidate when preliminary ranked-choice voting results are released may go on to lose the election once all the ballots have been counted and the final ranked-choice voting results are determined. The AP will call a winner based on ranked-choice voting results if it's clear another candidate cannot catch up when additional votes are counted. What do turnout and advance vote look like? As of Feb. 20, there were 5.1 million registered voters in New York City. Of those, 65% were Democrats and 11% were Republicans. About 1.1 million voters were not registered with any party. Slightly more than 1 million voters cast ballots in the 2021 New York City primaries, about 27% of eligible voters, according to the city's Campaign Finance Board. About 12% of ballots in that primary were cast before election day. How long does vote-counting usually take? In the 2024 presidential election, the AP first reported New York City results at 9:01 p.m. ET, about a minute after polls closed. New York City's election night tabulation ended for the night in Queens at 12:25 a.m. ET with about 90% of total ballots counted across the city. Are we there yet? As of Tuesday, there will be 133 days until the November general election. ___ Follow the AP's coverage of the 2025 election at
Washington Post
an hour ago
- Politics
- Washington Post
New Yorkers might vote for a socialist mayor, but a Muslim?
When hijacked airplanes were flown into the World Trade Center in 2001, New York's popular mayoral candidate Zohran Kwame Mamdani was just 9 years old. On that otherwise bluebird day, he had been in the United States only two years, after moving to New York with his parents from Kampala, Uganda. Seventeen years later, he became an American citizen, after completing a degree in Africana studies at Bowdoin College.
Bloomberg
an hour ago
- Business
- Bloomberg
NYC's Zohran Mamdani Tries Selling Socialism to the Home of Wall Street
By Zohran Mamdani wants to give New Yorkers free buses and free childcare, and tax rich residents and corporations to pay for it. He has vowed to impose a rent freeze, lead a fight against Donald Trump's deportation campaign, and arrest Benjamin Netanyahu if the Israeli Prime Minister sets foot in the city. It's unlikely Mamdani will be able to keep many of these promises even if he succeeds in his bid to become the mayor of New York City. But his proposals are nevertheless resonating with enough voters to achieve something that would've been unthinkable even six months ago: A democratic socialist who believes capitalism is theft has a shot at becoming the leader of capitalism's citadel. 'I am a democratic socialist, yes,' Mamdani said on Bloomberg's Odd Lots podcast last month. 'And I started to call myself that after Bernie Sanders' 2016 run for president when I finally had a language that described the way that I saw the world and the way that I believe the world should be, which is one where every person has the dignity they need to live a decent life.' The 33-year-old's campaign — fueled by a slew of viral social media posts, personal charisma and populist economic messaging — is designed to appeal to some of the city's poorest and most marginalized voters. One of his plans, for example, involves setting up government-owned grocery stores that will focus on 'keeping prices low, not making a profit.' But polls show Black voters, who typically turn out in high numbers for Democratic primary elections and live in relatively less-wealthy areas of the city, are more likely to back his chief rival: former Governor Andrew Cuomo, 67. Additionally, Mamdani's donors are concentrated in the relatively well-off and progressive enclaves of Brooklyn — more Park Slope Food Coop shoppers than CTown Supermarket fans in the Bronx or Queens district he represents in Albany. Cuomo's funders, meanwhile, are Manhattanites living in the moneyed world of the Upper East Side and Upper West Side. Manhattan v. Brooklyn Cuomo's donors are concentrated in Manhattan, while Mamdani's are in Brooklyn Those distinctions strike at the heart of not just the New York mayoral race, but also the future of the American Democratic party. After Kamala Harris' loss in the 2024 presidential election to Trump, Democrats have been convulsed by debate and indecision over how best to regain their mojo with voters. Superstar congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has endorsed Mamdani, is in a camp that believes populist economic policies and progressive cultural ideas channeled via young candidates is the way forward. The other cohort, including older members of the party establishment, is of the view that a more centrist approach will prove the winning strategy. 'Older voters are tied to traditional political institutions, Democratic clubs, unions, even churches where their pastors were very engaged in local organizing and electoral mobilization,' said Basil Smikle, a professor at Columbia University's School of Professional Studies and the former executive director of the New York State Democratic Party. 'And that generation of voter has also viewed the Democratic party specifically, and voting, as a path to political and economic empowerment.' But younger voters who came of age in the era of the Obama administration and Bernie Sanders' campaigns practice 'a politics that eschewed traditional democratic pathways to power, for a more individualized politics,' Smikle said, referring to the divide among Black voters. 'I think a younger voter looks at the party and sees more compromise than they would like.' A Public Policy Polling survey conducted in the first week of June found 35% of voters favor Mamdani versus 31% for Cuomo, who resigned as governor in 2021 over allegations of sexual harassment that he has denied. It's an outlier. All other polls have shown Cuomo coming ahead in the Democratic primary for the mayoral election, though the margin of his lead has narrowed in recent weeks. Former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg News parent Bloomberg LP, has endorsed Cuomo, saying the former governor's 'management experience and government know-how stand above the others' in a crowded field. Incumbent Eric Adams isn't taking part in the June 24 primary after a corruption scandal and is running instead as an independent. On the Republican front, which has struggled in traditionally deep-blue New York, Guardian Angels Founder and radio host Curtis Sliwa is running unopposed. No matter who triumphs in the primary, Mamdani and Cuomo are likely to face off again in November's general election. If Cuomo doesn't win, he has vowed to run on a third party ballot line. If Mamdani loses, he could run on the Working Families Party ballot line. If Mamdani is elected mayor, he would be the first Muslim, South Asian mayor of the city in its 400-year history. The son of Oscar-nominated filmmaker Mira Nair and Mahmood Mamdani — a prominent scholar of colonialism at Columbia University — he was born in Kampala, Uganda, and immigrated to the US at age 7. He then attended some of New York's elite educational institutions before going to Bowdoin College in Maine, a small private liberal arts school from where he graduated in 2014. That educational pedigree and some of his proposals that particularly appeal to well-off progressives have prompted criticism that he is out of touch with regular New Yorkers. His relative inexperience — in his four years at Albany, Mamdani has sponsored just three bills that have been enacted into law — has also drawn the ire of skeptics. The New York Times Editorial Board this week wrote that it doesn't believe Mamdani ' deserves a spot on New Yorkers' ballots,' saying that his 'experience is too thin.' For all that criticism, Mamdani has still managed to draw thousands of small donors to his populist platform. To date, his campaign has more than 20,000 individual donors, the most of any Democratic mayoral primary candidate in the city since 2001, with the exception of Andrew Yang, who mounted an unsuccessful campaign in 2021. Mamdani's donors gave an average contribution of $62, the smallest amount of any candidate in the current race for mayor. Mamdani's policies have shifted in his short political career, but they remain firmly on the left of the spectrum. In 2020, when Mamdani first ran for office, he supported the 'defund the police' movement, but has repeatedly said during his mayoral campaign that he won't cut financing for law enforcement. Yet he does not support hiring more officers at the New York Police Department, which he has previously characterized as 'racist, anti-queer & a major threat to public safety.' Instead, he has called for the creation of a new Department of Public Safety to handle mental health-related 911 calls, which he argues will free up police to solve more serious felony crimes. He wants the NYPD's headcount to remain at current levels, unlike several of his rivals, who have proposed hiring thousands of new police officers. Mamdani has called for some cuts to the NYPD's budget, including cutting back its communications department, $1 billion overtime budget, and the elimination of its strategic response group, a small unit created in 2015 that is involved in responding to protests. Mamdani's support for Palestine and a lengthy record of criticizing Israel is now proving to be another lightning rod, given New York is home to the largest Jewish population outside of Israel and as antisemitic incidents increase across the nation. At Bowdoin, Mamdani started the college's first chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine. SJP was one of the groups behind the pro-Palestinian protests that swept college campuses across the US in the wake of Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel and the Jewish state's retaliatory bombing campaign in Gaza. In his latest comments that have stirred controversy, Mamdani — during an appearance on The Bulwark podcast — defended the use of the phrase 'Globalize the Intifada,' a reference to the armed Palestinian uprisings against Israel. He has also refused to say that he supports Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state, instead saying he supports its right to exist as a 'a state with equal rights.' And based on a warrant issued by the International Criminal Court, whose jurisdiction the US doesn't recognize, he has said he'd use the NYPD to arrest Israel's leader. 'Ultimately this is not a desire to have to arrest Benjamin Netanyahu,' Mamdani said in an interview with Bloomberg News on May 29. 'It is to make clear that if Benjamin Netanyahu chooses to visit the city, this is a city that stands with international law.' When asked about his stance on Israel and the reluctance of pro-Palestinian activists to denounce Hamas, Mamdani said he 'will be the mayor for each and every New Yorker, but that includes each and every Jewish New Yorker,' adding that his campaign's focus on affordability lines up with the focus of Jewish New Yorkers. Ultimately, Mamdani's biggest challenge may be enacting the economic proposals that he says will make New York more affordable and have resonated with his supporters. He wants New York to borrow $70 billion over the next 10 years in addition to the roughly $25 billion already targeted for affordable homes in the city's 10-year capital plan. New York law limits the amount of debt local governments can incur. As for Mamdani's plan to raise corporate taxes and impose a new 2% income tax on city residents who earn more than $1 million a year, Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul has repeatedly voiced opposition to increasing levies. 'You need to work with the state and ultimately the city is a creature of the state,' Mamdani said on the Odd Lots podcast. 'And any agenda you have as a mayor that seeks to match the scale of the crisis New Yorkers are living through will require Albany.' With assistance from Marie Patino Joe WeisenthalTracy Alloway Edited by Pratish Narayanan Katia Porzecanski Alex Newman
